Tella Thera Sinks 20 Suites into a Kissamos Hillside

Tella Thera opened above Kissamos Bay on 14 July 2025 with 20 suites and a villa arranged across 15,000 square metres of olive-covered slope. Much of the accommodation sits partly underground, with planting continuing over its roofs. The construction strategy is the clearest way to understand the house, without relying on a general promise of low impact.

The setting

The town sits on Crete’s north-west coast, around an hour by road from Chania International Airport. The hotel is eight minutes from the centre and faces the broad bay, with mountains closing the horizon to the south and west. Balos and Falassarna lie in the wider region, but both require onward travel from the hillside.

The site descends amphitheatrically through an olive grove. Accommodation follows those contours in low bands, so the planted roof of one level becomes part of the view from the path above. The common pool occupies a wider terrace near the centre, while private plunge pools sit against individual gardens lower on the slope.

The provenance

Founders Loukas Tourkomanis and Chevon Low commissioned Stella Pieri and her team at Pieris.Architects, with Karolos Chanikian responsible for the landscape. The brief joined a small independent hotel to an existing grove. Low volumes follow the site’s established contours.

The existing trees became part of that constraint. Displaced trees were replanted on the property or neighbouring farmland. Their return is visible from above, where trunks interrupt the geometric roof beds and keep the new contours from reading as a continuous planted platform.

The design

The architects used part-subterranean construction to hold the buildings inside the slope. Sand-coloured walls emerge only where rooms and terraces need light, then disappear beneath roofs planted with native and Mediterranean species. The physical effect is clearest in the aerial photographs: paths and gardens occupy as much of the frame as façades.

Inside, continuous microcement rounds the walls into arches and vaulted passages. Oak doors and wardrobes repeat those curves, while rough boulders become reception counters and low tables. A circular skylight places an olive tree at the centre of Anemoia’s bar. These are concrete extensions of the land strategy, not decorative claims about nature.

The rooms

Seventeen of the 20 suites have private plunge pools. The published starting plan totals 140 square metres: 50 indoors and 90 in the garden terrace. This weighting puts almost twice as much measured area outside the room, where gravel, planting and water extend the suite into the hillside.

The Signature Villa totals 380 square metres, divided into 160 inside and 220 outside, with a larger infinity pool. Across the categories, the principal distinction is the amount of private water and external ground; the arched interior language remains consistent.

The table

Anemoia is the restaurant and bar, arranged around an olive tree beneath a circular opening. Its plant-forward menu draws partly on the edible garden and nearby farmland, while a long common table, arched windows and the planted centre bring the same materials into the hotel’s most public room.

The wellness

Thaleria continues the underground plan with an indoor magnesium pool, steam room, sauna and treatment rooms. Its arched window opens onto dense greenery, while a yoga terrace occupies the roof above. No treatment outcome is needed to explain why the spa belongs below ground in this particular house.

The stewardship

Photovoltaic panels, geothermal infrastructure, low-flow fittings and native planting are specified systems. Their presence does not establish an overall environmental outcome without operating measurements; the stronger evidence remains physical and visible: retained topography, part-subterranean rooms and replanted trees continuing the roofline.

At the upper path, olive trunks rise through the roof beds and the accommodation falls below the line of sight. The bay remains visible across those gardens instead of a wall of rooms. That is the house’s successful argument: 20 suites and one villa made legible through excavation and landscape, while their roofs give the hillside back its continuous surface.