Dexamenes stands on Kourouta Beach, Elis, western Peloponnese, and its rooms are the concrete tanks that once held wine. The winery went up at the waterline in the 1920s, and guests have slept inside the tanks since 2018. Eight more suites now sit on the roofs of the beachfront row, looking straight out at the Ionian.
The lineage is the currant trade. Currants were the main export of the Greek Kingdom, and when the crisis of 1910 collapsed that trade, unsold stock was turned into wine and the first wineries went up to do it. Dexamenes was built on the shoreline so that ships could be loaded with wine straight out of the tanks before they sailed for overseas markets. The industrial structures stood relatively untouched from the 1920s until the conversion reached them.
What the tanks are
Two concrete blocks dominate the site, each divided lengthwise into two rows of ten wine-storage tanks. Every tank measures roughly 5 by 6 metres, which turned out to be the dimensions of a room. The conversion took them one at a time, 30 square metres inside with a 15 square metre patio, each with its own bathroom. The manholes and pipes stayed on the façade of every tank and the patina stayed on the inner walls. Where the old walls were sliced through to make doorways, the cut face shows beach-pebble aggregate, and the polished terrazzo inside picks that colour up.
The ground between the two blocks was an industrial scrapyard and is now a courtyard garden. A shallow pool runs down the middle of it. The two steel drums that gave the hotel its logo stand in the water, with slabs cut from the tank walls set in as stepping stones, so a guest can walk inside a drum and hear what the light and the acoustics do on a concave wall through the day. Local grape and currant varieties are established along the edges of the garden. The sea-front tanks keep their immediate connection to the beach, with beds centred on a wide sliding window, and a promenade walkway raised above the sand links them to the rest of the hotel; its railings are made from the irrigation system that once sat on the tank roofs.
The level above
Eight rooms now occupy a new elevated structure on the roofs. A framework of slender metal tubes and timber planks is held above the solid tanks, thin enough that the canopy reads as a plane floating over the concrete box. A water channel runs along the seaward edge, carrying the eye from the building out into the horizon, and the reflections off the wooden pergola move across it. Each room opens to the sea from a generous veranda under the pergola, and the way in is from the rear courtyard, which ties the upper layer into the life of the hotel below. From up there a guest looks down on the silos, the vines and whatever is happening in the courtyard.
The new layer covers 2,760 m², completed 2026. K-Studio drew it, as it drew the original conversion, and the 2026 extension design team was Dimitris Karampatakis, Giorgos Mitrogiorgis, Christina Charistou and Dimitra Vasileiadou. This is the second phase of the conversion, and the rooftop of the back block has no use settled for it.
The new rooms are 8 Seaview Terrace Suites, each 33 m² plus private patio, with floor-to-ceiling glass and an infinity lake that begins at the edge of the balcony and sets itself against the open Ionian. That takes the hotel to 44 keys in three types: two ChemLab Suites, 34 former wine tanks and the eight terrace rooms on top of the beachfront row.
The two laboratories
Two of the 44 keys were the winery’s chemistry laboratories. The ChemLab Suites are in a neoclassical building that stands on the beach itself, and they are now fully private suites, the largest in the house at 50 square metres, with a framed view of the sunset.
Dining, and the cultural building
The two original stone out-buildings hold the dining and event rooms. Reclaimed bricks found inside the structures line the floors and the terrace, and the pitched roofs were rebuilt with ceramic tiles made locally to blend with the originals. The taverna has an open kitchen and a communal table used for wine tastings and cooking workshops, with a dining terrace alongside it for meals made from local ingredients. Facing the terrace and the kitchen is a large cultural building fitted for exhibitions, workshops and lectures, and through the summer season resident artists present performances, installations and exhibitions in it.
Who is this for
A traveller who wants the archaeology of Elis from the coast, and who likes a room that was built for something else entirely. Ancient Olympia, Ancient Elis, Chlemoutsi Castle and the Temple of Apollo Epicurius are all within reach of the hotel, and a wine route of more than eight estates runs through the same country. Kourouta is clear Ionian water and a long beach. The terrace suites are for anyone who wants the horizon unbroken; the courtyard rooms are the calmer choice.
