A 27,000 sqm olive grove, trees over 300 years old, runs down to the beach at Messonghi, in the heart of a village on the south-east coast of Corfu. The Olivar Suites was built inside that grove and opened in 2021, and the grove is still the first thing a guest sees. There are 120 suites, nearly all of them standalone, and most have a private pool in a walled courtyard with at least one old olive tree in it.
The hotel stands on the beach itself, 20km from Corfu airport and 22km from Corfu town. It is owned within Voulgaris Hospitality Group, privately held, and employs 165 people.
The site plan reads as a small settlement. Low, clean volumes sit among the trunks, separated by stone walls and joined by curved footpaths. No cars come in, so guests walk. Anyone arriving by sea can come in at the hotel’s own dock. The built area is 7,350 sqm on a 26,500 sqm plot, which leaves most of the ground as grove.
The grid around the trees
The brief went to AUDO, architecture and interiors both, and the practice began with the trees. A flexible grid was set around their exact coordinates so that as few as possible had to come out. To make that grid work on ground where nothing lines up, the architects drew ten distinct suite typologies, each shaped to fit a particular gap. Eight of the types are published for booking, from a 38 sqm junior suite with a garden view to the 70 sqm Ionian Suite on the beachfront with its own pool.
Along the beachfront runs a system of parallel walls 2.70 metres high. They frame the suites and close each courtyard, which is how a hotel of this density gives privacy without spreading its buildings out. Phivos-Ilias Skroumbelos of AUDO has put the organising idea as an inward world built around the suite: the courtyard is the room that matters.
Local stone, local hands
Stone, marble and timber for the build came only from Corfu, and Corfiot craftsmen and labourers did the work. The hotel is run and staffed by the local community. The palette that follows is restrained: local stone, exposed concrete, natural plaster, timber and metal, with olive green borrowed for the restaurant indoors.
The late 18th-century olive oil mill at the centre of the estate was kept and repaired. Its shell, rough exterior and timber frames survive, and it now holds a cafe and boutique. Olibar, in the former olive mill, takes the same shell for its evening life, with live jazz, saxophone or cello sets several nights a week.
Reception sits at the highest point of the site and works as a screen, so the hotel comes into view on the walk down. A central atrium cuts through that building from top to bottom with a single olive tree standing in it.
Flya and the beach
The beach is about 200 metres of sand and pebble, with sunbeds, umbrellas and gazebos. Flya, chef d’hotel Thomas Barbakis, is the all-day restaurant on it, and he works with group executive chef Spiros Voulismas, who presides over Corfu’s Chefs Club. The kitchen buys from micro-producers on Corfu and elsewhere in Greece and cooks the season as it arrives. Among the trees there is a second, communal pool, with a spa and a fitness room.
Who is this for
Olivar suits a traveller who wants shade, quiet and their own front door, and who is content to spend most of a week inside one estate. Bougainvillea runs over the stone, bird song carries between the trunks, and the air holds old olive wood and the salt of the Ionian. Days are built around water, shade and a long table rather than a programme. Messonghi village sits at the gate, which gives an evening somewhere to go beyond the grove.
