For quiet
Mythic Villa
Exambela, Sifnos · Greece
Above Exambela, in the green middle of Sifnos, a private estate sits in eight thousand square metres of old olive terraces, with the medieval outline of Kastro and the open Aegean held in the distance. Mythic Villa is not a hotel. It is a house, or three houses, that you take whole and close the gate behind you.
The estate divides as you need it. Taken in full it runs to six bedrooms for twelve, or it splits into Gaia, the four-bedroom main house, and Greenstone, a two-bedroom annexe, each with its own entrance. Two infinity pools, a jacuzzi and an open-air gym are set among the trees, and the living rooms open straight onto terraces, so the line between inside and out mostly disappears. The language is plain and contemporary: white volumes, stone, pale wood and linen, nothing loud, the view left to do the talking.
Sifnos is the Cyclades at their most self-possessed, a walking island of footpaths, whitewashed monasteries and a pottery and cooking tradition that Greeks take seriously. This is the island that produced Nikolaos Tselementes, the cook who wrote modern Greece's kitchen into a book, and it still slow-bakes its chickpeas overnight and its lamb in clay. Exambela sits inland among gardens and old estates, a short drive from the lanes of Apollonia and the cliff-hung village of Kastro. It is the quiet, cultivated side of the island rather than the beach strip, which is the point of taking a house here: the food, the light and the silence, with a gate between you and the season.
The villa answer to the Cyclades is usually a white cube with a pool and a rental listing. Mythic earns its place by doing the ordinary things properly: a real setting on real land, architecture that keeps its voice down, and the flexibility to house one couple or three families without feeling like a compound. The caveats are honest ones. This is self-catered privacy, not a resort, so meals, a chef and service are arranged rather than assumed; it sits inland, a drive from the sea; and it is at its best from late spring to early autumn. Come for the olive terraces, the two pools and a whole island of good food at the gate, and it delivers exactly that.
