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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Heavenly hideaways on Antiparos
Tiny Antiparos has always had habitués of grand repute, from the days of Lord Byron (one of several visitors who carved their names for posterity into the stone of the island’s famous cave). Somehow it retains many of the dimensions, and the energy, of its past, and more than delivers on all the Cycladic semaphores – white churches and blue domes, limpid opal water, bougainvillaea-bowered tavernas. A house – or cottage, or villa – is the way to go here (though we admit loving The Rooster, the island’s coolest hotel by a mile, which opened in 2021). Boutique, a design-led portfolio of holiday houses across the world, has one of the best, and best-value, holiday lets on the island.
Antiparos Hideaways is a clutch of three whitewashed houses, two of them with three bedrooms and one with four, that evince a perfect Greek-island style: contemporary but natural, spare but welcoming. They’re in the island’s far north, just outside Antiparos town, an easy walk to both the sea and the square. Two of the houses have private half-walled gardens; all enjoy shady terraces and fully equipped open-plan kitchens. Owner-architect Nikolas Athanasoulias let his inner Donald Judd out to play in the sleeping areas, which in one of the houses are staggered over multi-level platforms and reached by clever wood-plank storage-stair units. There’s plenty to occupy yourself with on the island – boats with skippers, swims and snorkels, ancient digs, dinner to a soundtrack of whispering wavelets at Beach House, and more. boutique-homes.com, from €230 a night for six
Full-bore Cycladic luxury on Kea
The buzzy foray into Greece of One & Only – whose resorts, from Cape Town to Mauritius to Baja California, espouse an unbridled version of luxury that leans into contemporary design and showboaty restaurants – consists of not one but two addresses. On the southern coast of Athens, One & Only Aesthesis opened at the end of last year; it spreads across 21 seaside hectares of forest reserve in Glyfada, home to some of prettiest beaches on the Athens Riviera, facing out over the Saronic Gulf. But there’s an island proposal too, about a 40-minute boat ride away on the west coast of Kea, the closest of the Cyclades to Athens – known for its hiking trails, some alluring dive sites, and the archaeological dig at Karthaia, with its temples of Athena and Apollo uncovered in the 1960s.
One & Only Kéa Island, which opens at the beginning of May, consists of 63 one- and two-bedroom villas designed by John Heah, who has done everything from suites at The Berkeley in London to an Aman resort in the Dominican Republic. Marble, travertine and hardwoods are Heah’s stock in trade, and they’re combined here in dynamic ways: the spaces themselves are linear, while the accents – an enormous bathtub, a sexy mirrored wood mini-bar – are softened with curves around their edges. Glass doors combine the interiors with wide terraces surrounding private infinity pools. Elsewhere across the property there’s a wide range of venues at which to graze and sip, from a lobby cafe offering a Hellenic twist on afternoon tea to a 20-seat speakeasy-style bar, Incognito, specialising in Cuban rums and cigars. oneandonlyresorts.com, from €1,750
A neat industrial redux on Crete
Crete is having a moment, as we reported late last year: from its seaside cities to the hilly interior, where artisan farmers are experimenting with innovative hospitality forms, there’s a lot going on. The ideal place to make your base is Chania, the bustling creative hub on the island’s northwest coast. It’s here that new Design Hotels member The Tanneries has opened in a 19th-century waterside complex (the neighbourhood it’s in, Tabakaria, at the eastern edge of Chania town, was known for its leather tanners; several other former factories have been similarly converted into galleries and cafes, lending the neighbourhood new buzz).
The buildings’ industrial heritage, evident in the vast spaces and original materials, has been further celebrated by Smponia Konstantina, the Chania-based Athenian architect and furniture designer behind the re-do. She has incorporated blocks and planes of seamed brown marble and polished limestone, gleaming metalwork, and lots of industrial-chic task lighting. The rooms are contemporary in the extreme: monochromatic, angular, with bright-white walls, platform beds, floating staircases and huge windows that frame postcards of the horizon. The Tanneries’ big USP: its very slick spa, fitness centre and indoor pool, with a floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the sea. designhotels.com, from €150
On the Mani, cycling in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor
For centuries the Mani Peninsula has been sought out for its starkly beautiful encounters of land and sea, unreconstructed Byzantine village charms and wonderful walking paths. Those things, and its supreme solitude, are what drew the writer Patrick Leigh Fermor to it in the 1960s. He built his stunning house at Kardamyli, one of the most atmospheric of its towns. It’s here that small-tour specialist The Slow Cyclist is inaugurating a new series of expert-led tours, designed to weave literature, art and culture into the soft adventures it sells. The first, taking place at the end of May, has an itinerary loosely based on Leigh Fermor’s own meditations and wanderings from his book Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese. It’s led by Joshua Barley, an Athens-based writer, translator and classicist, along with Leigh Fermor biographer Artemis Cooper.
By day, you’ll cycle back roads and paths in and around Kardamyli, with lunches in local villages (like Kastania: one taverna, 11 churches) and special access to the Leigh Fermor House, before boating down to the Inner Mani – the wind-buffeted tip of the peninsula, and one of the southernmost points in continental Europe – for two more days of rustic landscapes and spectacular beaches along the Mediterranean. theslowcyclist.com, 27 May to 1 June, from £3,250 per person, excluding flights
