Tainaron Blue Retreat is a four-room house inside an early-19th-century stone tower at Kastri Vathia, near the bottom of the Mani peninsula. From the tower you look along the southernmost slope of the Taygetos range and out to sea. The building is defensive architecture: in times of conflict a Mani tower controlled the ground and repelled attack, and in quieter years it was lived in. Inside, the stairs are narrow and the ladders are wooden.
Vathia, the settlement the address names, holds about 70 two- and three-storey stone towers with turrets, raised in the 18th and 19th centuries against Ottoman forces and pirates, and it is called the Parthenon of Maniot building. Its people left after the 1980s, and the lanes have stood empty since.
The conversion
Kostas Zouvelos and Kassiani Theodorakakou drew the conversion. They turned a three-storey tower into a guest house across 191 sq m, completed in 2014. The structure inside and out had to stay as it was found, so every modern service and run of infrastructure was settled out of sight, and the narrow stairs and the wooden ladders stayed where they were. Outside, the interference had to be minimal, and the single addition is a water surface shaped to the topography: an outdoor infinity hydrotherapy pool, with a sun terrace and a stone patio beside it.
The work took the Special Committee Award for Overall Rating, 100% Hotel Design Awards 2015, announced at the 100% Hotel Show at MEC Paiania, Athens, on 7 to 9 February 2015. A jury of 12 judged the entries from their digital files.
The rooms
Four rooms have sea or mountain views, with Coco-mat mattresses and linen and sustainable amenities. The largest is the 25 sq m master suite, on two levels inside the top of the tower, where the original stone and the original woodwork are what you see. The 22 sq m junior suite looks to the mountain. The 18 sq m executive double looks to the sea, with the pool at the door. The smallest, a 14 sq m classic double, stands beside the main tower rather than in it, which is what makes it the most private of the four. Works by the sculptor Nikos Karalis are placed in the rooms. Two rooms can be connected, and one is a family room.
The ground
The house is at Kastri Vathia, Mani, a few kilometres from Cape Tainaron, the southernmost point of mainland Greece and of mainland Europe. The cape was formerly known as Cape Matapan. Ancient tradition puts a temple of Poseidon on it, worshipped particularly by the Lakones, and that temple became the centre of the Brotherhood of Freelakones. The cave at the tip was taken for the home of Hades, with Cerberus at its gate to keep the dead from leaving and the living from entering. The nearest airport is Kalamata, 125 km away, and Athens International Airport is 340 km.
The table
The kitchen works to a Maniot menu built on traditional recipes, set with a culinary consultant, Chef George Samoilis. The restaurant is small and it serves the guests of the house and nobody else. Breakfast runs from 9.30am to 12.30pm, and room service until 10pm.
Who is this for
This suits a traveller who comes for stone and silence. The towers of Mani are austere by design and the house keeps that register: Taygetos behind, open water in front, and the day spent between the sun terrace and the stone patio. There is an outdoor shrine in the grounds. Sunset over the sea and the first light of the next day are the two things the house asks you to be there for. Rooms are non-smoking and pets are not allowed.
