Stories

Passage of the day

Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare

Lord Byron · Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Aerial view of a crescent sand beach at the mouth of a green river valley on Andros, with a dirt road descending to it and a small white chapel on the headland

Onar: 18 cottages in a protected wetland, at the end of 10 km of dirt road

Mateo Pantzopoulos first reached Achla in the 1980s, when the only way in was by sea. He began with one piece of land and a stone house with no electricity. The village around it has grown to 18 cottages.

The mansion's street front on Omirou, white and honey-coloured stonework with green panelled doors and louvred shutters, potted olive trees along the pavement, the lane falling away to the right

A tailor’s son built it in 1874, and six rooms now hold its frescoes

Aerial view of the house on an Antiparos headland at sunset, two stone and white volumes set apart with a long dark water channel running down the slope between them to a stone-walled pavilion

EstatesAntiparos

Peninsula, the Antiparos house Iasson Tsakonas kept for himself

Three whitewashed cubic volumes standing in a row on a dry Tinian hillside, dry grass in the foreground and a terraced hill scattered with white houses behind

Three villas sunk into the rock at Agios Fokas

Low villas of rough local stone stepping down a dry hillside above the sea at sunset, their flat roofs level with the scrub and a dirt path running between them

Seven stone villas above the fishing village of Skinopi

Architect's visualisation of a curved white terrace along an infinity pool, with a dry-stone wall and arched openings on one side and a flat white volume above the sea

The Eye, the Amorgos house that takes its white volume from Chozoviotissa

The lit stone residences of Themonies on the slope below Chora, Folegandros, with the Monastery of Panaghia on the ridge above the town and the Aegean beyond at dusk

EstatesFolegandros

Five stone residences above Chora, in a farm complex that kept its threshing floor

A long infinity pool on a stone-paved terrace running out towards open sea, with a row of grey sun loungers under woven reed parasols along one side and dry-stone walls behind

Verina Astra, the house at the end of the Poulati road

Three whitewashed buildings standing around a long rectangular pool, with sun loungers and an umbrella on grey stone paving and a bare brown hillside rising behind

Verina Villa, let whole on the sand at Vathi

An aerial view over Xinara House: walled gardens, olive trees and terraced vegetable plots below a granite outcrop, with the village's blue-domed church and bell tower to the right

The bishop’s house at Xinara, brought back by the marble workers of Tinos

Painted blue tables and chairs on a stone terrace beside a glass wall, a shell-set balustrade beyond them, with the beach, a palm and the bay behind

At CHES on Ios, a nine-course menu drawn from the Cycladic islands

The dining room at Deka Trapezia, white marble tables and spindle-back wooden chairs set before a pale plaster wall with three arched niches of ceramics and a slatted rack of wooden letters.

GastronomyThessaloniki

Ten tables in Thessaloniki, and a menu called The Cook’s Prayer

Rows of vines on a sloping block at Ktima Gerovassiliou, with olive groves, ploughed fields and cypresses beyond, and the Thermaic Gulf along the horizon.

GastronomyThessaloniki

Ktima Gerovassiliou grew a hectare or two at a time

One man began with 2.5 hectares at Epanomi in 1981 and bought one or two more most years. The Malagousia he rescued at Porto Carras came home with him.

A round marble table laid with chopsticks, napkins and glasses in a seafront garden, with tamarisk trees, black rattan chairs and moored sailing boats beyond.

GastronomyParos

A garden by the sea on Paros, and Nobu Matsuhisa’s third Greek room

The third Matsuhisa in Greece sits in a Mediterranean garden on Piperi Beach, five minutes’ walk from Naoussa. Its season runs from mid-June to mid-September, and the kitchen is the Japanese and Peruvian one Nobu Matsuhisa built.

The double-height dining room seen from the mezzanine, with a brass sputnik chandelier over round tables and tall windows opening onto the Thermaikos Gulf.

GastronomyThessaloniki

Olympos Naoussa is open again on the Thessaloniki seafront

Wooden tables laid with glasses and plates on a stone-paved terrace, a rendered wall casting reed shadows at the left, and the open sea filling the frame beyond

GastronomyFolegandros

The one restaurant at Gundari, with its menu signed by Lefteris Lazarou

Rows of low bush vines running across a dry stony slope, with bare brown hills behind them and a thin strip of sea on the horizon.

GastronomyAndros

Three generations above Mesa Vouni, and vines that phylloxera never reached

The front courtyard under a pine tree, a long marble communal table and straw-seat stools on gravel, with the whitewashed houses and blue balconies of Antiparos town beyond.

GastronomyAntiparos

YAPA leaves Milan for one Antiparos summer

Aerial view along the cliff coast of Folegandros at low sun, with a bare rock headland dropping sheer into deep blue water and a further island on the hazy horizon

MaritimeFolegandros

The Rafnar from Ammoudi Bay, and the helicopter into Folegandros

A massage table dressed in white under a cane and timber canopy, a dry-stone wall behind it, a trolley of oils beside it and open hillside falling to the sea

The open-air spa at NÓS

A long rectangular pool running between two white Cycladic wings of White Pebble Suites, bamboo sun loungers along both sides, and a bar with rattan stools under a white parasol at the far end

The wellness floor at White Pebble Suites

A shaded stone terrace opening onto a small infinity pool, with dry-stone walls, an outdoor shower and open blue sea beyond, a low rocky islet on the horizon

Luura Cliff hangs work by 55 artists above Agia Eirini Bay

1 September 2026

An architect's render of a stone-walled walkway under a timber pergola, candle stands along both walls, opening to the sea

ROÉE at The Revery: a spa named for flow, above a private Cretan cove

1 September 2026

Nafplio seen from the walls of Palamidi: the red-tiled roofs of the old town, large sailing yachts and motor yachts lying along the waterfront quay, the Bourtzi fortress on its islet and the Argolic Gulf beyond

MaritimeNafplio

Nafplio Marina, below Palamidi, took its first boats in August 2026