Nao opened at Minos Palace Resort in May 2025, on the private peninsula the resort holds at Agios Nikolaos, in eastern Crete. It is a longevity hub with eight treatment rooms, built as part of a €5 million overhaul of the property. Its name comes from the ancient Greek for “to flow”: water as the source of life, and as an image of a body that keeps changing.
The name suits the place well. What opened is a diagnostic practice with a sea view, and that idea runs through all of it, from the questionnaire a guest fills in before leaving home to the fourteenth morning of the longest programme.
The framework
Nao is built around the 14 hallmarks of ageing, the biological processes thought to drive it. They include genomic instability, telomere attrition (the shortening of the protective ends of chromosomes), epigenetic change, mitochondrial dysfunction, disabled autophagy (the slowing of the cell’s own clean-up) and cellular senescence, when cells stop dividing. Alongside that framework, the hub works on five pillars: nutrition, movement, sleep, self-mastery, and connection and purpose.
The process starts before arrival. A guest completes detailed questionnaires and a first round of diagnostic tests at home, so the consultation on the day of arrival already has results to read. Next comes measurement: respiratory function, cardiovascular fitness, metabolic rhythms, biomarkers and the genetic blueprint beneath them. Only then does the guest receive a protocol, personalised to the results.
A ladder of days
Programmes run from one day to 14 days, and they go deeper as the days add up. Transform lasts three days. Longevity Pro, at 14 days, is as far as the method goes. The stages in between each add another layer of evaluation, so a first visit can be a day of orientation and a later one a full immersion.
That ladder is the honest part of the offer. A longevity protocol given in an afternoon is a treatment. Given across a fortnight, it comes closer to teaching, which is what the pillar of self-mastery is for.
The equipment
The eight treatment rooms sit alongside an infrared sauna, a vitality pool, hot and cold plunges, a vibroacoustic lounger that uses sound and vibration, a photobiomodulation room for light therapy, a brain gym and an emotional tunnel. There are also rooms for consultation, meditation and rest. The therapies include neuromodulation and intermittent hypoxia-hyperoxia, which alternates thinner and richer air to train the way the body handles oxygen, as well as red light and cryotherapy (treatment with cold).
The interiors are by Stones & Walls, the Athenian studio. The concept was developed with Moss Wellness Consultancy, led by Nigel Franklyn.
The scientific board
A scientific board oversees the method. Dr Evi Hatziandreou, a public health specialist trained at the Athens Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, directs it. She is joined by Professor Constantine Stratakis, a medical geneticist and endocrinologist who spent close to two decades at the National Institutes of Health. Professor George Chrousos, of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Academy of Athens, works on the biology of stress. Dr Elena Panzeri specialises in nutrigenetics, the link between genes and diet, and the microbiome, the community of microbes in the gut.
That is an unusual board for a resort spa, and it shows clearly what Minos Palace intended. Equipment can be bought quickly. A board of clinicians like this takes longer to assemble and is harder to give up.
The family behind it
Minos Palace belongs to Bluegr Hotels & Resorts. Its chief executive, Gina Mamidaki, founded the group in 1998, building on the work her father, George Mamidakis, began in Cretan hospitality in 1962. Nao is the family’s clearest move yet towards wellbeing, and the resort now presents the hub as its centre.
The headland
Minos Palace is an adults-only resort on its own promontory in the Gulf of Mirabello, with 360-degree sea views. Heraklion airport is 50 minutes away.
Who is this for
Nao suits an adult guest who wants a detailed, science-led picture of their own health, with time to rest between the tests. The vitality pool lies under a pitched glass roof, with sculpted stone loungers on one side and cushioned daybeds on the other. The reception lounge is curved and finished in sand-coloured plaster, with small bronze figures on a sideboard. Outdoors, exercise mats are laid on a stone terrace under an olive tree, looking across oleander to the open sea and a mountain ridge.
