Santa Marina stands on a hillside above Ornos Bay, Mykonos, on the south coast of the island, and it began as somebody’s house. Elias Papageorgiou bought the plot in 1979. It carried a house, a guesthouse, a windmill, a pigeon house and the chapel of Santa Marina that gave the place its name. The year after, he renovated the buildings, cut a road and put in a pool, and began spending his summers there with family and friends.
Santa Marina opened in 1986, as twelve bungalows numbered 101 to 112, of one to three bedrooms each. Guests swam in the family pool and ate breakfast beside it. In 1989 Papageorgiou bought the private peninsula next door, which gave the property its own beach, and he built a tennis court and a second pool on it. The main building followed in 1994 with 20 rooms, the first luxury hotel on Mykonos by the house’s own account. Two more buildings of 20 rooms each went up in 1998 and 1999.
The family that built it still holds it
Elias Papageorgiou died in 2012. His daughter and only child, Christiana Papageorgiou, took over the hotel and runs it today. The house reads its 40 years as an inheritance, passed from the founder to his daughter and to a generation after her, and its fortieth year, counted from the first bungalows, falls in 2026.
From 2013 she has worked through the property with the interior designer Silvina Macipe Krontiras, SMK Interiors’ founder and a friend since childhood. They began with the family’s own villa, before the work reached the hotel at all, and their hand now runs through 101 rooms and suites.
Starwood Hotels and Resorts took Santa Marina into The Luxury Collection in 1999. Marriott acquired Starwood in 2016, and the hotel has stood under The Luxury Collection, Marriott, since.
The villas are named for stones
There are 12, each with a private pool and a butler, ranging from a house that sleeps four to a four-storey one that fits 16. Most carry the name of a stone, from Turquoise and Tanzanite to Lapis Lazuli and Amethyst; the Presidential is the exception. The butler will arrange a dinner table, a chef or a yacht, and there are over 290 staff on the property to do it with.
A windmill you can sleep in
The windmill that came with the land in 1979 has been restored and is let as a suite, listed with the rooms. Three floors curve around a rounded staircase. The walls have the pale, almost porcelain finish of Cycladic building, the fabrics are plain and the colour of earth, and after dark the light comes from lanterns and from lamps thrown up at the coned ceiling. Papageorgiou counts the windmill part of the heritage of Santa Marina.
The pool, the spa and the tables
The largest single programme of works was 2016: the Oasis Pool, Ginkgo Spa, new suites with private pools and a complete restructure of the main building. Ginkgo Spa, four treatment rooms and a hammam, came out of it. One of the rooms is a couples’ suite, and a sauna, a steam bath and a hair and nail salon sit beside them.
There are five places to eat: Buddha-Bar Beach Mykonos, Elais Restaurant, the Oasis Pool and Lounge, the Santa Marina Beach Lounge and private dining. Buddha-Bar Beach was the first anywhere, opened with Santa Marina in 2013. Elais opened in 2024 as the Greek dining room, its cooking inspired by the Princess of Delos. Delos itself is a 20-minute boat ride from the resort’s own water, and the sandy coves of Rhenia are reachable by speedboat or on one of the house’s traditional kaiki boats.
Who is this for
Santa Marina suits a family or a group that wants its own walls and its own pool, and a couple after a sea-view suite. The ground is a landscaped hillside dropping to the sand of its private beach, with a tennis court and the Reef boutique on it, and Mykonos town is a 15-minute drive the hotel will arrange. Children are easy here, with a shaded playground and a paddle pool. September and October are the owner’s own months, when the crowds have gone and there is still warmth in the sea.
