Since spring 2017
Eleven guests
in the first month.
They have never advertised since. This is the long version of how a 1954 stone winery outside Nikiti became a hammam.
The first guest
She arrived on the morning of 14 April 2017. The first thing she said was, “it smells like my grandmother’s house.” That sentence is still pinned above Eleni’s desk.
The building
A barrel cellar,
then a hammam.
The first treatment room was a converted barrel cellar. The steam came from a single Turkish hammam shipped plate by plate from a workshop in Bursa and installed over four months.
Theodora is a civil engineer and did the structural work herself. Yusuf, who trained in Bursa from the age of fourteen, still oversees the marble and the wood-fired boiler.
How it happened
Twenty months
of restoration.
- 2015 Theodora returns from Athens to inherit the family property.
- 2016 Hammam plates arrive from Bursa and are installed over four months.
- 2017 Doors open on 14 April with three treatment rooms.
- 2019 Second hammam built; treatment rooms expand to six.
- 2022 Condé Nast Traveller “Hot List — Wellness”, Greece entry.
- 2024 Monocle The Forecast — one of fourteen retreats worldwide.
It smells like my grandmother’s house.
The first guest · 14 April 2017