Stories

Passage of the day

Just as the earliest tinges of the dawn flushed the eastern sky and turned the pillared Parthenon to a broken harp hung in the pearly horizon

Mark Twain · The Innocents Abroad

The two-floor neoclassical facade of Soil on Ferekidou Street, painted pale yellow with white pilasters, green shutters standing open and an iron balcony above the door.

GastronomyAthens

Soil, where the menu begins in the chef’s garden

Tasos Mantis and Alex Mouridis opened Soil in a neoclassical house behind the Panathenaic Stadium in November 2021, and its supply is one garden at Alepochori that the chef tends with his father.

7 October 2026

The courtyard at dusk, square and round tables under white cloths and copper lamps, lemon trees against a pink rendered wall and an open door into a lit room.

GastronomyAthens

Spondi enters its 30th year in Pangrati

7 October 2026

A rooftop restaurant terrace at dusk, tables laid with white linen and small shaded lamps, the lit Acropolis rising above the city rooftops beyond

GastronomyAthens

Above the cathedral, a kitchen with its own farm

7 October 2026

The open terrace at Tudor Hall, tables laid in white linen under a retractable canopy, with the Parthenon on the Acropolis rock to the left and the sun setting over the hills beyond.

GastronomyAthens

Tudor Hall cooks seven floors above Syntagma Square

7 October 2026

Covered terrace at Varoulko Seaside, tables laid in white linen with woven armchairs under a retractable awning, an olive tree at the edge, and yacht masts, the gulf and distant hills beyond

GastronomyAthens

Varoulko Seaside, the kitchen Lefteris Lazarou built on land

7 October 2026

Pale stone buildings with tiled roofs and a long arcade of stone arches stepped up a hillside, an orange grove in the foreground and cypress and pine forest rising behind

WellnessMystras

Euphoria Retreat: a four-storey Byzantine spa above the Eurotas valley

7 October 2026

Whitewashed suite blocks stepping down open ground above Oia, each terrace holding a dark plunge pool, pampas grass on the roofs and a bare volcanic hill behind

EstatesSantorini

The Andronis house that stepped back from the cliff

6 October 2026

Andronis Boutique Hotel stepping down the Oia caldera cliff from above, whitewashed terraces, loungers under patterned parasols and two small pools over the dark volcanic rock and the sea

EstatesSantorini

Andronis Boutique Hotel: 24 suites on the Oia cliff

6 October 2026

White cubic buildings on two levels behind a timber deck of cushioned loungers and palms, all reflected in the still water of the central pool

EstatesParos

Behind Parasporos beach, a Santorini family’s first house on Paros

6 October 2026

A long curving infinity pool running above a rocky cove, with striped loungers and white parasols along its stone-walled edge and a small jetty with two boats below

EstatesMykonos

Forty keys above Kalafati, watered by three springs

6 October 2026

An aerial view over Canaves Epitome: two large rectangular pools, rows of white vaulted villas with their own small pools, stone-walled gardens, and the open sea below the cliff edge

EstatesSantorini

The Canaves house that left the cliff

6 October 2026

Candlelit tables laid on a cliff terrace at dusk, bougainvillea to one side, the white houses of Oia lit along the ridge above a dark caldera with yachts at anchor below

EstatesSantorini

The highest house in Oia, and its lift

6 October 2026

Whitewashed terraces, a long blue pool and shaded daybeds stepping down the Oia cliff face above the caldera, with Thirasia and the open sea beyond

EstatesSantorini

Canaves Sunday: eight suites, cut into the cliff below Oia’s promenade

The smallest of the four Canaves houses in Oia has eight suites, three staff to every guest and no spa of its own, so a treatment means 80 metres along the path to the sister house next door.

6 October 2026

A long infinity pool with teak floating sunbeds runs along a clifftop terrace, the caldera water and its far rock wall filling the view beyond the pool's edge

EstatesSantorini

Where the caldera falls steepest

Cavo Tagoo Santorini has 13 suites at the north end of Imerovigli, on the highest ground of the crater rim. Liakos and Associates Architects finished the renovation in 2016, and Roka holds the restaurant address through the season.

6 October 2026