
Discover Greece’s Historic Hotels
A Stay Like No Other!
Being a popular holiday destination, Greece offers thousands of hotels, resorts, guesthouses, and apartment rentals. From 5-star accommodations to basic bed and breakfast options, visitors are spoilt for choice when it comes to picking the best roof to house their dream holiday.
Some places, however, are truly unique. Some places cannot fit into a standard category. Once you visit them, they’ll stay with you forever. Their vivid spirit becomes like your favorite book hero, a part of your memory that’s too special to let go. Through careful restoration, they’ve been given a new lease of life and are now open to visitors!
Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor’s House, Kardamyli, Mani
Patrick Leigh Fermor is a legend in modern Greek history. Lovingly known as Paddy to his friends back home in England and Mihalis in Greece (his code name in the Cretan resistance), he and his wife Joan decided in the early 60s to build their dream house in southern Peloponnese’s rocky peninsula, Mani. They bought the land, brought the local stones on the backs of donkeys, and filled every room with books, drawings, and antiques from nearby Kalamata (where, at the time, old houses were quickly being pulled down to quench the thirst for modern apartments).
Paddy and Joan bequeathed their home to the Benaki Museum. After a meticulous restoration by the shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, it’s now open to visitors for up to three months every year.


Visitors enjoy high-standard amenities (comfortable sleeping, daily breakfast and housekeeping, air-conditioning, and central heating) paired with incredible natural beauty and the privilege of staying in one of the most unique places in the world.
Kinsterna Hotel, Agios Stefanos, Monemvasia
If you deconstruct Greece, you will, in the end, see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her (Odysseus Elytis, Nobel Prize in Literature 1979)
Kinsterna’s beating heart rhymes perfectly with the famous Elytis verse. This 17th-century Byzantine estate stands peacefully amongst lush vineyards and olive groves overlooking the Aegean Βlue. It will remind you of a fort, and rightly so—back in the day, the only way to secure safety was by building solid walls in a location high enough to monitor the area and repel the pirates.

By the early 21st century, Kinsterna had lost all its former glory. Many of its roofs and walls had collapsed, and looters had plundered it. Restoration began in 2006, and after four years of meticulous traditional building and repurposing material, a new luxury hotel opened its gates. The Byzantine past is echoed in the vaulted ceilings and arched portals. All modern amenities ensure comfort.


The cistern (kinsterna in Greek) remains at the property’s heart, as it did four centuries ago. Kinsterna is the ideal base to discover south Peloponnese – Kalamata, Kardamyli, Monemvasia, and Mani. One thing is for sure: you will think twice before checking out of this peaceful paradise.
Villa Posillipo, Corfu
This impressive villa follows Corfu’s history over the last four centuries. Initially built in the early 18th century under Venetian rule, Posillipo changed hands over the centuries and housed the families of local aristocrats, merchants, diplomats, lawyers, and historians, all contributing to its current unique character and glory.

Moving forward to the 21st century, the villa was the filming setting of the much-loved British TV drama The Durrells. This large family home, carefully restored to provide all modern amenities, can comfortably house up to ten guests.


Just like Corfu itself is an elegant merge of its Venetian, British, and Greek past and present, Posillipo gracefully masters that fusion, giving its lucky visitors a unique experience. The property’s charm cannot be compared to any standard hotel stay: it’s got the unrivaled advantage of its rich history, ready to be discovered by those lucky few.
The Imaret, Kavala
Greece was under Turkish rule in the 18th and 19th centuries. Muhammad Ali, the later founder of modern Egypt, built this impressive complex in his birth city, Kavala, to house a public soup kitchen (imaret in Turkish), a Koranic school for Muslim boys to be trained as imams and lawyers, and a charitable center. The building served its first purpose until the early 20th century and later housed Asia Minor refugees from 1922 onwards.

In the late 1990s, the Missirians, one of Kavala’s last tobacco families, started the meticulous restoration of the building and created a monumental luxury hotel and the MOHA research center, aiming to promote the intercultural study of Islam.


Imaret is a multi-awarded 5* hotel offering the ideal base to explore north-east Greece. Every detail, from the wooden floors to the tablecloths and plates, is inspired from and recrafted by hand as the originals while incorporating all modern luxury amenities (think of Limoges porcelains and Bulgari toiletries). It’s an experience like no other, a treat for the senses: the Imaret will open your eyes to a different Greece, away from the crowds and standard expectations.
Grande Bretagne, Athens
It might come as a surprise, but Greece’s most iconic hotel, the Grande Bretagne, started its long history as a private house – the second most prominent house in Athens at the time after the royal palace. In the 1840s, Athens had no more than 20,000 residents, most living in poverty. Antonis Dimitriou, a wealthy Greek expat from Trieste, bought a plot in Syntagma Square. King Otto wanted to embellish the square (his palace, now the Greek Parliament, was sitting alone in an otherwise plain-looking, unpaved piece of land). Following the king’s advice, Dimitriou built an exquisite villa of ninety rooms, later bought by a young farmer and a Greek cook trained in France, the first owners of the new Grande Bretagne Hotel.

Today, Grande Bretagne is a Marriott property and, as ever, the most elegant accommodation option in Athens. From its supreme rooms to the swimming pools and fine dining restaurants, the GB has become one of the city’s landmarks and an unmatched hotel choice.

The Athens Flair Hotel
At the corner of Delfon and Didotou Streets, in the prestigious neighborhood of Kolonaki, you will find the Athens Flair, a fantastic 4* boutique hotel. Once, this was the home of the iconic Greek actress Elli Lambeti. Lambeti is a legend for the modern Greek stage and movies. A BAFTA-nominated actress, the favorite student of Marika Kotopouli, she worked with some of the genre’s greatest (Karolos Koun, Dimitris Horn, Michael Cacoyannis), offered unforgettable performances, and mastered any role she’s ever tackled – from Tennessee Williams to Federico García Lorca and Eduardo de Filippo.

In 1959, Elli met her second husband, the American novelist Frederic Wakeman. Fred gifted his wife the beautiful neoclassical property in Delfon, where they stayed for the following years.
Today, the Flair is a fully renovated, elegant boutique hotel that opened its gates to its first guests in 2022. The high ceilings and generous spaces are faithful to Hansen’s original designs – he was the Danish architect responsible for the “Neoclassical Athenian Trilogy,” the Zappeion, Athens Academy and University, and the National Library of Greece.


Kolonaki is a 15-minute walk from Syntagma Square, full of shops, cafés, and restaurants to discover, a very safe neighborhood to walk around, and near the lush National Gardens. The Flair will warmly introduce you to the grandeur and ampleness of Athenian neoclassical residences, so few of which still survive at this level of comfort and charm.
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