Construction began at Ermioni in September 2025 on a marina that will hold 256 yachts, the largest of them 60 metres. In the same month the project’s masterplan was approved. A shore that has served for years as an unmarked waypoint between Hydra, Spetses, Dokos and Porto Heli is being given a formal address, and full operation is expected by the summer of 2027.
A sheltered bay
Ermioni sits on the southeastern edge of the Argolis, on an inlet of the Gulf of Hydra counted among the most naturally protected bays of the Argo-Saronic. The marina takes 96.3 stremmas of water and 20.4 stremmas of land — a small footprint for a harbour of this order, and a deliberate one.
The geography has always made the argument. A yacht working this coast passes Ermioni on almost every leg, and until now has passed it. What changes is not the shelter, which the bay already had, but the depth and the servicing behind it.
The harbour
The basin is dredged to 4.5 metres and entered through a mouth 62 metres wide, with a manoeuvring circle of 70 metres inside it. Four floating concrete piers, 385 metres in combined length, carry 256 berths — 231 of them permanent, 25 held seasonally — for motor and sailing vessels up to 60 metres.
These are the numbers that decide who can come. Sixty metres is the length at which the Aegean’s options narrow sharply, and a harbour that takes such a vessel on a permanent berth, rather than for a night alongside, is a different proposition from a quay.
Stone the colour of murex
On land, 2,300 square metres of building are set across 26 structures, mostly of one and two storeys, drawn to a consistent three-metre datum so that the whole reads as a continuation of the town rather than an arrival beside it. The walls are grey local stone and pigmented plaster in porphyry tones — light purple and pink worked into the surfaces themselves.
The colour is not decoration. Ancient Hermione’s wealth came from the murex shell and the purple it yielded, and the palette is a direct reference to it. It is a rare thing to see a commercial harbour reach that far back for its materials, and rarer still to see the reference carried in plaster rather than a plaque.
Behind the buildings are administration offices, shops, restaurants and a private hotel of 20 rooms. Vehicles and parking are placed discreetly to the rear, leaving the waterfront wholly pedestrian, and two amphitheatrical flights of steps descend from the promenade directly to the sea. At least 2,000 square metres are given over to planting.
The hands on it
The project is owned by Ermionida S.A., with Tethys and EMMA Capital participating in the investment vehicle behind it. Neiheiser Argyros holds the architecture, the land-zone masterplan and the landscape design; Marnet S.A. leads the sea-zone masterplan, the marine works design and the environmental study. Hill International is project manager, and Trésor Hospitality has developed the business plan and pre-opening services for the hotel, which it will also manage.
The division matters, because a marina is two projects wearing one name — a piece of marine engineering and a piece of town-making — and they are rarely held by the same hands. Here they are separated cleanly and joined at the waterline.
What it changes
The Argo-Saronic has long been cruised for its proximity rather than its infrastructure: an easy first night out of Athens, a run down to Hydra and Spetses, a week that never needs to cross open water. It has also been the ground where a larger yacht runs out of berth first.
A 60-metre capacity on this shore alters the shape of the week. Ermioni becomes a place a vessel can be based rather than merely passed, with the Argolid behind it — Nafplio, Epidaurus, the whole eastern Peloponnese — reachable by road in an afternoon, and Hydra a short crossing away. The hotel of 20 rooms suggests the other half of that thought: guests who join a yacht for part of a passage, and those who would rather sleep ashore.
Whether the harbour holds its restraint through to 2027 is the question worth watching. The drawings are unusually disciplined for a development of this size, and the temptation on a waterfront is always to add. On the evidence of the stone and the datum line, the intention is to build something that looks as though it has been at Ermioni for a while.
The house makes the introduction, for those who ask.
