5
The house
Built downwards, since 2009.
A brother and a sister bought a ruin at the top of a cliff and could not afford the land beside it. So the hotel went the only way it could.
How it happened
A ruin, a cliff and a second-hand lift.
The house at the top was a sea captain’s, built in 1887 and empty since the sixties. It came with a strip of cliff eleven metres wide and thirty-eight metres tall, which the seller described as the garden.
Nikos wanted a restaurant and Eleni wanted six rooms. Neither fitted in the house, so each summer for five years they cut one more terrace out of the rock below it, until the terraces reached the water.
The lift came from a hospital in Piraeus in 2011. It is slow because it was built for beds. We have never thought of replacing it.
Who you will meet
Four people you will know by Tuesday.
Eleni Vasilaki
Owner
Since 2009
Nikos Vasilakis
The kitchen
Since 2009
Daphne Roussou
Reception and reservations
Since 2014
Stavros Melis
The lift, the pool and everything else
Since 2011
Level 0