The girls from close villages came to the Ursuline nunnery in Loutra to learn how to weave carpets. The village is still tiny, ancient, catholic, as quiet as a desert, and immaculate. Our lovely and atypical “summer house” is just beyond the nunnery, in the narrow streets of the village where you can only walk quietly. A traditional hundred-year-old Cycladic stone house with four-meter-high roofs and smoothed walls that resemble brush-strokes of hazelnut ice cream. The view of the valley from the courts, and beyond the numerous Tinos dovecotes, is soothing, and you only hear bees buzzing in the bushes that separate the estate from the wild Mediterranean nature. Stratos lives in central Greece, in a magic region made of mountain villages, lakes, forests, and canyons. We know nothing about this man and the inspiration that led him to use the architectural shapes of a traditional island dwelling to contain only a few elements, at the same time gentle and contemporary. A seaman’s kerosene lamp, a duck-beak-yellow wooden corridor as a changing room, long benches made of young wood, the Nordic wood-burning stove, and a sweet and dreamy atmosphere in each room. On the outside, Orthodox influences and Venetian lines run along all the stone arches and the inlaid marbles of the villages, while the sky-blue and the olive-green of doors and windows confirm we are in Greece.

thehouse.gr/rental-house-for-four-people-tinos/

Words and pictures Meraviglia Paper.