Seven stone villas stand among olive trees, lavender and thyme on a slope on Milos, each carrying the Greek name of a herb or a tree that grows around it. Nine private acres of unspoiled land hold all of them, every villa looks over the Bay of Milos, and the small fishing village of Skinopi lies directly below.
The ground lies inside the protected archaeological area of the Ancient City of Milos. The ancient city stood on this hillside, between the settlements of Trypiti and Klima above the gulf, and its Roman theatre sits there still.
Built on the syrmata
The drawings are by the Greek architects Maria Kokkinou and Andreas Kourkoulas, 2014 to 2016, with the landscape by H. Pangalou & Associates. The design was set to the least intervention the site would allow, and the finished scheme was nominated for the EU Mies van der Rohe prize.
The villas take their form from the syrmata, the boathouses burrowed into the coastline of the fishing village directly below. Built of local stone, they were made to sit within the landscape and to follow Cycladic building. Inside, the floors are poured concrete, the walls whitewashed and the roofs made of Cycladic cane. Five of the seven are one open room with a bathroom that gives on to an outdoor shower and a kitchen outside the door; Levanda and Skinos add a separate living area. Retractable glass doors at the front open on to a deck, and every villa faces south or west.
One owner, two phases
Nausika Georgiadou owns the lodge. A ruin bought in the village of Trypiti became a bed and breakfast first; then came a plot just above the fishing village of Skinopi and, over a decade, the plots around it. Three villas opened in 2016 and four more in 2022. The following came by word of mouth, before the island’s chalk-white cliffs and sea caves became widely photographed.
The seven villas
Three are named for herbs: Kapari, Anemone and Thymari, 30 sq m indoors for two on a 60 sq m footprint, with a king bed, indoor and outdoor showers and an outdoor kitchen. Almyra and Elies each have 42 sq m indoors on an 80 sq m footprint and sleep three. Levanda has 65 sq m, a separate living area and a dining area outside, and it was drawn facing west to frame the sunset. The largest is Villa Skinos, 85 sq m indoors, 160 sq m footprint, four adults, with three sofa beds and a second bathroom off the living area.
Arriving
Adamas, 2.6 km away, is the island’s main port. A jeep or a quad bike suits the dirt track up to the lodge, and the nearest restaurants and a supermarket are in the hilltop village of Trypiti, ten minutes’ drive away. Guests who come by boat are put ashore at a private deck below the property, and the boat then moors at the Adamas marina a few minutes along the coast. The villas also have direct access to a private swimming platform. Milos is volcanic, and Georgiadou holds that it has the most varied marine landscape in Greece: the white rock of Sarakiniko, the bare islets of Glaronisia and the caves at Kleftiko. The island belongs to an archipelago of three with Kimolos and Polyaigos, and all three can be reached in a day by small boat.
Who is this for
Skinopi suits a traveller who wants the Cyclades at its plainest: one room open to a deck, a swim from that deck before breakfast, and a west-facing chair at sundown, when the sun goes down over Andimilos and the boats glide into the port below. Walk east along the coast and prehistoric obsidian mines lie there, fragments still scattered on the ground. Walk west for the ancient theatre, the catacombs and the site where the Venus de Milo was found.
