The Naxian Collection is a group of suites and villas at Stelida, on the north-west coast of Naxos, 700 metres from the sand at Agios Prokopios. Yannis and Maria hold it, and both were born and raised on the island. Their family has been on Naxos since the 15th century.
A lot of the food served here is grown on the estate, and the rest comes from fishermen, shepherds, bakers and producers on the island. The vineyard, the cellar, the kitchen garden and the olive groves all belong to the same family.
The build and the setting
The buildings are made from materials quarried and cut on Naxos: the island’s marble, granite, stone and wood. Cycladic in style, with moulded chimneys and rounded balconies, they stand high on a bouldered hillside, with the Naxos salt lake below and the open sea beyond.
Naxos is the greenest of the Cyclades, with mountains, thick vegetation and freshwater streams, and the ground around the buildings is fields and greenery rather than bare rock. The property runs on energy-efficient lighting and appliances with solar water heating, and food waste is composted or fed to the animals.
The suites and the villas
Five kinds of accommodation are bookable: Grand Suite, Premium Suite, Luxury Villa, Honeymoon Villa and Elegant Villa. Every suite and villa has a pool of its own, private or semi-private.
The two suites are 45 square metres each. The Honeymoon Villa, built for a couple, is 80 square metres and the Luxury Villa 100. The largest is the Elegant Villa: 230 square metres with two private pools, sleeping eight adults and three children.
One restaurant serves the whole house, in the glass-walled reception building, with the sea and Naxos town in view. The house is closed from November to March.
What the estate grows
The kitchen garden grows tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, strawberries and aromatic herbs, and a guest can take a basket and pick from it rather than leave it to the kitchen. The garden is biodynamic, its sowing and picking timed to the phases of the moon and the turn of the season, and it supplies both the restaurant and the cooking classes.
Past it are a chicken coop for free-range eggs and a path through the vineyards. The olive oil served with the bread is pressed from the family’s own groves. Cooking lessons and in-room wellness treatments are arranged on request.
The cellar, the bar and the fumoir
The bar and restaurant face the cellar the wine came from, and the family’s vineyard, which supplied the grapes. The cellar holds over 2,500 bottles, and tastings and private dinners are held down there.
The bar keeps a whisky library of over 1,000 labels, which takes up a wall of it. Since 2017 the cocktail list has been made with the mixologist Nikos Bakulis. A fumoir holds cigars, many of them limited editions not sold elsewhere.
The hill it stands on
Stelida is a hill of 118 metres at the western end of the cape of Agios Prokopios, about 3 kilometres south of Naxos town. A survey in 1981 identified it as a prehistoric flint and chert quarry and called the site unique in the Mediterranean basin. The Greek state put an archaeological protection zone over the hill in 2004.
Later excavation dated the working of the flint from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic, which makes Stelida the oldest known site on Naxos. On the southern peak, work from 2019 to 2021 found a peak sanctuary of the Minoan type, 7 by 6 metres, built from the local flint nodules and dating to 1600 to 1550 BC.
Who is this for
It suits families and groups who want a kitchen, a terrace and a fireplace of their own for the cooler months, and who are content to drive to dinner. The hillside sits above the resort at Agios Prokopios, with Agios Georgios beach 500 metres off and Agia Anna a kilometre away. Paths wind between the buildings through fragrant planting. Birds nest in the eaves, hawks come down to drink at the pools, and on a windy day the hill sounds like surf.
