On a hillside above the Gulf of Elounda, Rosewood will open its first house in Greece in 2027. Rosewood Blue Palace takes the shore where one of Crete’s most storied resorts long stood — 154 rooms and suites set between the fishing village of Plaka and the port of Elounda, looking across the water to the fortress islet of Spinalonga. It is the arrival of a house known for reading a place before it builds upon it, on a coast that has drawn the discerning for a generation.
The setting
The setting is among the most evocative on the island. The resort rises on Crete’s northeast coast, between Plaka and the elegant port of Elounda, set into the hillside above a private beach. Elounda has been Crete’s address for discreet luxury for decades, and the reasons are in plain view: still water, a sheltered gulf, and the long Cretan light.
Across that water lies Spinalonga — the Venetian fortress island, later a leprosarium — held in view from the bar and the terraces alike. Few shores in the Mediterranean carry a horizon so charged with history.
The provenance
Rosewood comes to Greece under its guiding idea, A Sense of Place — the notion that a house should belong to its ground rather than impose upon it. The resort is owned by Phāea, the Greek group whose stewardship of Cretan hospitality gives the project the local root that the philosophy asks for. What Rosewood brings is a quieter register of luxury, and the residential ease that has become the group’s signature.
The Blue Palace is not a new building but a reimagining. For two decades it was among Crete’s most celebrated waterfront resorts; Rosewood is redrawing that legacy rather than raising something from bare ground.
The design
The interiors are the work of K-Studio, the Athens practice, to a vision informed by Cretan tradition and identity. The spaces that house the resort’s six restaurants and bars are the work of Afroditi Krassa, the Greek-born, London-based designer brought in for them.
The register throughout is residential rather than grand: stone, timber, and the muted palette of the coast, drawn from the island rather than imported onto it.
The rooms
Of the 154 rooms and suites, 85 carry private pools, positioned across the hillside to hold the view. Three outdoor pools, for adults and for children, complete the seaward face, each held to the same deep-blue horizon.
The table
Among the six restaurants and bars are several specialty restaurants and a beach club, and an all-day room drawing on local purveyors and on the property’s own organic garden.
The spa
At the centre sits Asaya, Rosewood’s holistic well-being concept, conceived here as more than a spa. Hydrotherapy areas, a movement studio, a fitness centre and a yoga pavilion are arranged for the long, unhurried mornings the Cretan light invites — wellbeing in the register the island has always understood, of sea, stillness, and time.
For a house making its Greek debut, it is a considered choice of ground. Elounda asks for nothing to be shouted; Rosewood, at its best, does not shout.
Rosewood Blue Palace opens on the Gulf of Elounda in 2027. The house makes the introduction, for those who ask.
