For quiet
Apokryfo
Lofou · Cyprus
A cluster of derelict stone houses at the top of a Troodos village, bought and rebuilt one at a time until the village had a reason to stay alive. Apokryfo is what came of it, and the name, which means hidden away, is the plain truth of the place.
Lofou sits in the foothills below Mount Olympus, the high point of the Troodos, a village of vaulted stone lanes that had been quietly emptying out. In 2008 the Cypriot architect Vakis Hadjikyriacou and his wife Diana, an interior designer, bought a quartet of roofless, pomegranate-choked houses on its edge and spent a year putting them back together with local builders, old materials and the building crafts the island had nearly forgotten. What opened in 2009 is nine restored suites and houses gathered around a turquoise pool, each with thick walls, a fireplace or a private courtyard, and the particular calm of somewhere that was made slowly. The lounge keeps a library, board games and an open fire, and reads more like a family house than a hotel.
Agrino is the kitchen, and it cooks Cypriot country food the way the mountains actually eat: village wine and mountain herbs, the slow dishes that reward a whole evening. In summer you take dinner on the rooftop terrace with the roofs of Lofou falling away below you, or in the courtyard beside the water. It is not a table chasing stars. It is the kind you settle into for a few hours and are reluctant to leave.
Cyprus sells itself on the coast and misses its best trick. The interior, the Troodos with its painted churches and its wine villages, is where the island keeps its character, and Apokryfo is the most graceful way to stay in it. A couple looked at a dying village and chose to mend it rather than build something new, and you feel that decision in every wall. There is a spa with a sauna and steam room, three golf courses within half an hour and skiing on Olympus in winter, but the reason to come is simpler than any of that. It is quiet, it is real, and it is beautifully made.
