Where Chiron kept his school, above the sea at Tsangarada
Mornings that start late on the terrace. Evenings that end at a long table under the plane trees. A house that asks nothing of you.
A listed nineteenth-century mansion on the eastern slope of Pelion, restored stone by stone and kept as a house: thick schist walls, timber ceilings, a fireplace on every floor, and a garden to lose a day in.
The house
The mansion was a monument left to the weather. The only way to save it was to give it a life again. The house came first.
A mansion of the old aristocratic Pelion type: three storeys of schist, a central stair hall, shutters opening onto the orchard on one side and the sea on the other. Beside it the paraspito, a stone pavilion with its own veranda. Inside, the original stone and timber meet linen, walnut and marble. Nothing hums. Nothing blinks.
Rooms and suites
A host who knows the mountain, a kitchen that knows your breakfast by the second morning, and a few things the house always does, so that you never have to ask.
Met at the airport or the harbour, and driven up. Rooms from three; departures at noon, or later.
Included, cooked to order, on the terrace or in your room.
Wine, mountain tea, honey and sweets in every room, without a bill.
Rooms made in the morning and turned down at dusk. Fires laid in the cold months.
Books on Pelion, Greece and the sea. A fireplace on every floor.
Walks, boats, horses, the ski centre in winter, a car and driver whenever you wish.
No restaurant open to the village, no events unless they are yours, no music except what you choose.
For weddings, retreats and gatherings, the house is yours alone.
An avenue of cypress. An orchard of apple, pear, plum, cherry and apricot. A kitchen garden, beds of thyme and mountain herbs, and a pond with water lilies, all watered from the estate's own cisterns.
Three suites, two larger rooms and four rooms, across the mansion and the pavilion. Most with a fireplace. All with the view they were given a century and a half ago.
The largest rooms of the house: a bedroom and a sitting room under the timber ceilings, with the tallest windows and the widest views.
A generous bedroom with room for a third, by the window or by the fire.
Bedrooms of the old proportions, each with its own view of the orchard or the sea.
There is no restaurant, by design. Breakfast comes from the orchard and the kitchen garden and lasts as long as you like. Dinner comes from the best tavernas of Tsangarada and Mouresi, or from a visiting cook at the long table under the plane trees.
Where Chiron taught Achilles and Jason. Chestnut and beech forest, stone villages, cobbled mule paths and small beaches at the foot of the cliffs. The house arranges every day on the mountain for you.
Four quarters along the slope, and the thousand-year-old plane tree of Agia Paraskevi.
Two coves of white pebble joined by an arch in the rock.
A beach beneath the cliffs and the old harbour where the cobbled path ends in the sea.
Centuries-old stone paths through the chestnut woods, past springs and chapels.
Cherries in June, apples in September, chestnuts in October.
Skiing in the morning, the sea by the afternoon.
For a wedding, a retreat or a gathering of family and friends, the house closes its gate and becomes yours.
EnquireNine keys, the pavilion and the garden, for up to twenty-six guests, with the gate closed behind you.
Halfway between Athens and Thessaloniki, on the far side of the mountain. However you come, the last half hour is the same: over the ridge through the forest, and down to the house with the sea below.
Met by the house's car.
On request, from Athens or Thessaloniki.
By private boat to the coast below the house.
The first dates will be offered to those who have written to the house before they are released anywhere else.
CENTAURS