Euphoria Retreat is a wellness house at Mystras, Laconia, in the Taygetos foothills, inland and inside the fortified medieval town. The buildings stand on several levels among pine, above the Eurotas valley, and the spa is the centre of the place. It takes adults only, from age 14.
A mansion of 1830 already stood on the ground, and the house was built around it rather than over it. The rooms, the restaurant and the spa are held in contemporary concrete, and what a visitor sees of them from outside is an older skin: pale local stone, dozens of arches, a façade cut to settle into the slope. Planting runs through the terraces, from flowers to full trees, and pine closes the ground at the back.
That forest belongs to the house, and it opens onto the trekking trails of Mount Taygetos. The archaeological site of Mystras is a 5-minute drive, the village square with its tavernas a 2-minute walk, and Sparta 10 minutes away. Kalamata airport is a little over an hour; Athens is 3 hours. That town above the house was where Gemistos Plethon ran the school of philosophy that carried Greek learning back into western Europe, and its Byzantine churches, monasteries, palaces and ruins are what guests climb to see.
The spa
The spa rises four storeys around a central well. Byzantium supplies everything above and around it: the vaulting is domed, gold leaf runs across it, and the water is divided into a series of small pools. The Kneipp footbaths sit at the foot of a stairwell that winds up to a window on the sky, with the treatment rooms reached off it, and the indoor pool carries on outside into the pines.
The house’s own method, Euphoria Methodos, sets ancient Hellenic medicine alongside Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Five Element theory of wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The facilities are named for what they do: a Byzantine hammam, a sphere pool, a sanctuary deprivation pool for meditation, a Watsu pool for aquatic bodywork, a speleotherapy salt room, a tepidarium, Finnish and infrared saunas, a cold plunge pool, an ice fountain, experiential showers and the Waterwell Kneipp footbaths. Yoga and meditation rooms, a gym and a reformer Pilates studio sit with them. A weekly timetable of included activities runs through tai chi, qigong, yoga, mat Pilates, sound healing and fitness training. An orange grove at the front of the main property holds gardens given to the Five Elements, the same framework the treatments work from.
The founder
Marina Efraimoglou, formerly in investment banking, founded the retreat after surviving cancer in her late twenties and burning out at work. She treated her own recovery through Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Five Elements and other alternative methods, then left banking to retrain in the medicine that had helped her. The retreat grew out of that. Efraimoglou designs and hosts several of its programmes herself, among them The Odysseus Journey, Feel Alive Again and Holistic Leadership. The family owns and runs the house, which is a member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
What begins at home
The precision medicine programmes start before arrival. A diagnostics kit collects blood, urine, saliva and stool samples at the guest’s home, and these go to the EUCRASIA-IMON laboratories in Thessaloniki, where over 250 biomarkers are analysed for metabolic imbalance. A doctor there reviews the results with the guest in an online consultation before arrival, and the medical module is agreed then. Further diagnostics follow on site, with a mid-stay and a pre-departure consultation, and a 2-month aftercare programme carries on after departure. These programmes run 7, 10, 14 and 21 days, and the house recommends at least 10. The shorter wellbeing programmes run 3, 5, 7, 10 and 14 days, each with a personalised nutritional plan.
Rooms
There are 45 rooms and suites in seven categories, beside and above the spa, and no two are the same. The interiors take the iconography of Byzantium as their starting point, in lunar blues, rustic reds and gold over blond-wood floors, and most rooms have a balcony, terrace or courtyard looking down the valley. Four rooms are adapted for guests with disabilities, and the lifts and most of the grounds are accessible. Rooms in the refurbished 1830s Leoncini Mansion can be taken on exclusive use, with a private dining room of their own. Rates are published from 505 euros a night, double with breakfast, and run to 2,770 euros for the 100-square-metre Byzantium Grand Suite.
Who is this for
The house reads as easily for one person on their own as it does for two, a couple or two people from the same family. Days are warm rather than clinical: Greek mountain herb tea, a seasonal kitchen of fresh fish, Greek cheeses and salads, wine and coffee where you want them. Lemon trees stand in the garden and pine closes the ground behind. Guided hikes climb to the Byzantine town at several grades of difficulty, fitness trails cross the forest, and the library is there to borrow from.
