How the Quiet Island of Tinos Became Greece’s New It Destination

Just below the crest of a mountain on Tinos, in Greece’s Cycladic archipelago, sturdy oak trees are bent low to the ground, the near-constant northern wind sculpting their trunks and branches into bizarre, gravity-defying poses. Known as the Meltemi, these winds have occupied an outsize place in the Tinian psyche since antiquity, when a myth arose to explain them: Hercules, angry at Boreas for killing his friend, took revenge on the god of the north wind by killing Boreas’s children on Tinos. The grieving and enraged father, in turn, unleashed his fierce gales to blow on the rocky landscape for all eternity. 

Today, the Meltemi make the scorching summer sun bearable and keep the grapes in the vineyards from overheating. They whip up surfable waves at Kolymbithra beach, in an Aegean Sea that is otherwise as placid as a swimming pool, and help deter cruise ships and superyachts from encroaching on this low-key haven where wild goats roam the unspoiled terrain and stray cats patrol the convivial public squares. 

The island is increasingly a favorite spot for vacation homes among a creative set of Greeks and other Europeans—Poor Things filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek National Opera artistic director Giorgos Koumendakis, along with fellow artists, architects, musicians, and the like—looking to avoid the hubbub of the country’s more popular retreats and drawn to Tinos’s longstanding ties to the art world. For decades, though, most tourists here have been religious pilgrims, arriving by ferry and often crawling uphill from the port on their hands and knees to pray beneath a holy icon of the Virgin Mary inside the Church of Panagia Evangelistria. (The daily trickle of the devoted becomes a flood on August 15, the date celebrated as the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, when Greek Orthodox believe she died and her soul ascended to heaven.) But with the opening in May of Odera, the island’s first five-star resort, plus the growth of the luxury-villa operator Five Star Greece and the launch this summer of Hoper, a commercial helicopter service connecting Tinos to Athens in under 45 minutes, the island is poised to become Greece’s new It destination. 

Whether Tinians want to claim that title, however, remains an open question. As Maya Tsoclis, a summer resident with deep ties to the area, quips at the expense of a certain overbuilt, hard-partying neighbor island, “What’s the distance between heaven and hell? The distance between Tinos and Mykonos.” 

Tinos has alwaysbeen something of an oddity. For some 500 years, until 1715, it was part of the Venetian Empire, which rewarded Tinians who adopted the Roman Catholic faith with premium land. Today, while up to 90 percent of the country’s population identifies as Greek Orthodox, on the island the figure is only 60 to 65 percent, with the remainder Catholic. The whitewashed villages were historically one or the other, though intermarriage has come to modern-day Tinos. 

Built high in the mountains—to guard against pirates—the villages connect via ostensibly two-lane switchback roads that at points are so harrowingly narrow, they feel more like glorified bike paths. Architectural artifacts dot the hillsides: hundreds of charmingly decorated dovecotes, where locals raised rock pigeons for food and rich fertilizer, even exporting the latter; abandoned windmills that once powered a lucrative grain-milling industry; and more than a thousand tiny white chapels, each constructed by a family as a shrine to a loved one. Low dry-stone walls built to terrace the mountains for agriculture still stand, one possible reason the renowned 20th-century philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, who lived on Tinos, dubbed it “the handmade island.” 

The other explanation: Tinos’s abundant marble quarries, which have fed a centuries-old network of skilled carvers and inspired countless artists. Stroll through the village of Pyrgos and observe the door frames, balconies, even an elegant bus shelter fashioned from marble, and step into the house where the venerated sculptor Yannoulis Chalepas was held a virtual prisoner in the early 1900s by his mother, who thwarted her son’s artmaking until her death, blaming it for his shaky mental health. Since 1955, the nearby Preparatory and Professional School of Fine Arts has instructed new generations of sculptors from throughout Greece and beyond—and drawn more artists to Tinos in the process—and the hilltop Museum of Marble Crafts offers a fascinating look at how the stone is excavated and carved. (Amateur sculptors take note: A figure’s face should always be chiseled from the side that pointed toward the sun.) 

We left very at home here, as if there was an affinity.

– Maya Tsoclis

Maya Tsoclis is sitting on the terrace of her 19th-century stone house in the tiny mountain village of Koumaros, sipping water infused with lemons from the trees in her garden. She has been coming to Tinos for nearly 40 years, ever since her father, the celebrated artist Costas Tsoclis, decided Hydra had begun to resemble an Athenian suburb. “We were looking for something rougher,” recalls Maya, herself a household name in Greece thanks to her long-running series of television travel documentaries, noting that Tinos felt dreamlike—almost medieval—by comparison. There was an authenticity to the place; people still worked with their hands. 

The Tsoclis family found a house in the village of Kampos and became enmeshed in the fabric of the island. In 2011, the Costas Tsoclis Museum opened in a former school in the village, and this summer it will inaugurate a new wing, which connects to the original building via a modern amphitheater. (Performance has always fascinated him; he has even played one of theater’s quintessential female roles: Medea.) At 94, the compact and silver-haired Costas still works in his museum studio every day during his seasonal sojourns from Athens, painting six or seven hours to take advantage of the optimal light. “Unfortunately, I always consider creation an obligation,” he says. 

When I visit him, a grid of hot-pink abstract paintings covers the wall, just some of what will be a monumental installation of 90 panels in Athens come September. “In these artworks, my theme is the miracle of technology and the danger and fear of technology,” he explains, sitting in the shade of a vine-covered trellis, where museum visitors are often happily surprised to find him. “There’s a huge space within this technology, which although I use, I don’t understand. So it would be inconsistent for everything I do to be understood. It should also be incomprehensible.” 

When the Tsoclises acquired the Koumaros villa in 2006, Maya learned that her family had a poignant connection to it: In 1950, her father was a poor, young art student in Athens who had fallen in love, but the young woman’s disapproving parents spirited her away to an Ursuline convent on Tinos. Costas sold his possessions to buy a ferry ticket, then made his way to a monastery, where, pretending to be her cousin, he inquired after his lost love. The monks told him she’d gone to the nuns’ summer residence. Unable to find it in the rugged topography, he returned to Athens and never saw or heard from her again. This villa, it turned out, was the Ursulines’ summer retreat. “One of the reasons he bought the place is because this woman was here,” Maya says, as the church bells peal next door. (A subsequent search for any record of the woman turned up nothing.) 

Maya, who is also a former fashion designer, renovated the house meticulously, preserving unique architectural details such as the rocks that protrude through the walls of the lower level. She built an amphitheater, where she now hosts a monthlong arts festival every August, converted a traditional dovecote into a small guesthouse, and added a sauna and pool. The 16 acres are adorned with her father’s artworks and fragranced by hot-pink bougainvillea. Now she has decided to lease the property, on a very limited basis, through Five Star Greece—though she clearly has mixed feelings about tourism on the island. 

“All Greeks know Tinos because of the pilgrimage. We forget now, but Tinos is the pilgrimage. It’s the soul of Tinos,” says Maya, who is not religious herself. “The Virgin Mary saved Tinos,” she adds, explaining that travelers who wanted to party were turned off by the ritual (and, perhaps, the lack of an airport or yacht berths) and flocked to Mykonos instead. By the time developers realized Tinos’s potential, “people were a little bit wiser. Tinos doesn’t have the superyachts; we have the thinkers. The problem now is that because Mykonos was so overwhelmed with tourism—and bad tourism—a new word that’s used is the ‘Mykonization’ of Tinos. This is what we’re trying to avoid.” 

In 2012, she and her partner, Alexandros Kouris, started Nissos Brewery to help the island develop revenue streams beyond tourism. Its high-end potables have since won awards in beer strongholds Germany and Belgium, and the powerhouse Carlsberg Group recently bought a minority stake. U.S. expansion is in the works. In addition to the craft brewery located in the main town, known as Chora, Nissos keeps a cellar beneath a former Catholic monastery on the outskirts of a village near the villa, where the couple have been experimenting with aging beer like wine (the result is curiously akin to Cognac) and host candlelight tastings for friends and family. 

The beer business was a bold choice on an island known for its wine. T-Oinos, one of the leading win- eries, has made a name for itself in the 21st century by producing a certified-organic lineup featuring Assyrtiko grapes grown in sandy soil shot through with granite and Mavrotragano grapes planted in shist and clay. The vineyards are some 1,500 feet above sea level, where oregano, lavender, thyme, and fennel grow wild and where the lower temperatures and the Meltemi combine to keep the grapes cool—preserving their acidity and freshness—and dry during the day, preventing disease. 

We forget now, but Tinos is the pilgrimage.

– Maya Tsoclis

Under the direction of big-name master vigneron Stéphane Derenoncourt, T-Oinos ages the wines in stainless steel, glass, amphorae, and wood barrels—and sometimes a combination—producing about 20,000 bottles annually with an all-Tinian crew. About half the output goes to other islands in the Cyclades, including Mykonos, where purveyors often refer to it as the “local wine” because the island has no vineyards of its own. That designation has led more than a few bewildered tourists to book tastings at T-Oinos only to find out when they can’t locate the vineyard that they’re on the wrong island. 

T-Oinos’s Clos Stegasta reds and whites complement a thriving gastronomic scene that evokes the ancient Greek seafaring tradition of philoxenia, the custom that you should be generously hospitable to guests, in part to ensure similar treatment when you travel. Tinian meals tend to be languorous affairs, with an abundance of dishes served on exquisitely crafted ceramics and shared around the table. There are Athenian imports, such as Svoura, known for its simple but well-executed menu, including addictive zucchini chips and fresh pasta. Diners park on the outskirts of the village of Komi—even a motorcycle would have trouble maneuvering down some of the stone paths—and stroll to a lively piazza, where the tables are set beneath a grand, leafy maple tree. There are also homegrown innovators, including San to Alati, Thalassaki, and Marathia, the last of which Marinos Souranis opened in Chora more than 20 years ago as a taverna focused on local ingredients and old recipes. He has since increasingly delved into experimental dishes—think shrimp carpaccio with strawberry sorbet—and techniques, particularly in the realm of fish maturation. 

“In the beginning, it was very primitive,” Souranis recalls on a warm evening, as the Aegean laps the beach across the road. Now, having built a research lab with a maturation chamber under his house, he consults with restaurants globally. The aim is to harness the process of decomposition, changing the fish’s collagen into sugars over days or weeks, akin to how beefsteaks are aged. The results are intriguing: tuna that bears a salty, chewy resemblance to prosciutto; amberjack soft enough to spread. 

Souranis has also fostered the foraging trend on Tinos, collecting and preserving mushrooms for the menu’s hearty risotto, for example, during the winter months, when Marathia is closed. “We’re open eight months, but we work 12 months,” he says. 

Tinos’s appetite for invention may have played a role in luring Dimitris Skarmoutsos, arguably Greece’s most famous chef. Skarmoutsos, whose Delta restaurant in Athens was the nation’s first to earn two Michelin stars, is the executive chef behind Eos at Odera, which offers a sophisticated take on Mediterranean cuisine. 

From the approach on a rocky dirt road, Odera has a low profile that discreetly hews to the landscape, then hugs the steep hillside behind as it descends toward the private beach, giving each of the 77 guest rooms a magnificent view of the azure Aegean below. From the sunbeds and sofas on the private patios, wild goats can be seen scampering up the slopes that frame the resort in whimsical juxtaposition with Odera’s contemporary-chic style, which comes courtesy of Studio Bonarchi in Athens. The design feels carefully considered to blend in with the Tinian aesthetic: an abundant use of stone and marble; high stone-walled passageways that evoke the towns’ labyrinths. Granted, the facades aren’t painted white with brightly contrasting doors and shutters, the way they are in the villages, but the neutral palette harmonizes with the arid landscape and is arguably less obtrusive than a stark-white luxury compound far from a settlement would be. 

Other new construction, primarily in the form of private homes, is also attempting to meld with the cliffs and terraced mountains. Martha Giannakopoulou, an Athens-based architect who has been spending summers on Tinos with her musician husband for 11 years, is designing three homes on the island: one for a Greek family, the others for two Brits creating a compound together. The family house is being built from Tinian stone and will be “half hidden within the hill,” she says. 

Giannakopoulou notes that the local government is determined to keep growth under control by strictly limiting the size and location of new dwellings, aiming to encourage development within village boundaries rather than allowing random villas to mar the countryside. “The construction has blown up quite a bit [in recent years],” she says. “The capacity of the island is not high: There’s a lack of water and electricity. And that’s one of the problems Mykonos has been having—the infrastructure is very weak. Very often in August, 10 or 15 days go by and you have minimum access to water.” 

To be sure, in a place that thirsts for fresh water, ask locals about newcomers (whether individuals or hotels) and the first thing you’ll likely hear is a swipe at all the swimming pools, along with a rhetorical question: “Why do they need pools? We’re surrounded by the Aegean.” 

At Odera, 24 rooms and suites have private infinity pools that jut toward the sea, and another 30 have shared ones. The resort accesses the water via a borehole and treats it with salt electrolysis, a natural disinfectant method that reduces the need for chemical chlorination. Other sustainability efforts include using biologically treated wastewater to irrigate its landscaping, geothermal energy for heating and cooling, and rock excavated on-site for wall cladding, dry-stone walls, and gravel. 

Maya Tsoclis, forone, understands Tinos’s appeal to those seeking a refuge, noting that no other island has so many beautiful villages. “It’s an open-air museum,” she says, adding that the pertinent development question is, “How far can you go without destroying what is unique?” 

After all, she and her family chose Tinos, too. “We felt very at home here, as if there was an affinity,” she explains. “Sometimes it’s not just aesthetics. There’s something in a place that tells you that it can be right—for some reason you don’t know.” 

Her father is of the same mind. His sculpture of Saint George slaying the dragon is installed in the courtyard of his museum, easily leading a visitor to assume that the creature’s scaly, undulating tail was intended to mirror the rough, rolling mountains in the distance. But Costas insists his physical surroundings impact only his body and mind, not the literal look of his art. “I get a lot of energy from Tinos—that’s why I’m here,” he says. “I’ve lived in different parts of the world, and I didn’t have a certain homeland that I carried with me. When I came here, this miracle made me creative. It’s as simple as that.” 

Secret Cyclades 

About 86 miles from Tinos as the tern flies sits another nearly untouched Cycladic island, the tiny Folegandros, which draws roughly 50,000 visitors annually, compared to the more than 2 million who flock to nearby Santorini. Officially, it has a population of about 700. “Maybe counting the donkeys,” says our skeptical driver. Now it also has a new five-star resort, Gundari, meaning “rocky place.” 

The first phase of 25 bioclimatically designed guest suites, each with a private solar-heated pool, rests atop a cliff overhanging the Aegean. The plushest have room-size showers fitted with twin showerheads. Gundari also has an infinity pool long enough for actual swimming. Two private three- and four-bedroom villas were set to open in July, and Australian owner Ricardo Larriera tells Robb Report that phase two will be built into the cliff below, with a projected opening date of 2026. Lefteris Lazarou, Greece’s first chef to earn a Michelin star, is behind the restaurant, Orizon, which serves dishes such as pesto calamari, quinoa salad with prosciutto, and deconstructed lemon-meringue pie beneath the stars in a courtyard enclosed by high stone walls. 

Moor your yacht in the harbor, helicopter in from another island or Athens, or book Gundari’s boat for a transfer. Once on Folegandros, explore it via the resort’s fleet of e-bikes, charter a vessel to go snorkeling (some of the best beaches aren’t reachable by car), and visit the clifftop town, where the ancient fortress that defended against pirates still stands and a hike up the steep, zigzagging path to the church will satisfy your step count for the day. 

The Athenian Art Boom

While Tinos has turned out more than its share of artists and is a favorite destination of many others, Athens remains Greece’s contemporary-art epicenter—and is increasingly capturing international attention. 

One weekend this past June, Jeff Koons and Maurizio Cattelan joined a cadre of art-world denizens for the annual festivities of influential collector Dakis Joannou’s Deste Foundation. The city is also home to Dimitris Daskalopoulos, who in 2022 gifted 100 key works jointly to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Guggenheim in New York. The Dolli, the dripping-with-chic boutique hotel that bowed last year, even has a Calder mobile in the gym. 

Mega gallery Gagosian opened in 2020, and this past May, Michael Werner Gallery made its Athenian debut in an elegant apartment steps from the Museum of Cycladic Art—which, in striking juxtaposition to its priceless antiquities, currently has a Cindy Sherman show on view. “Athens has something now, you just feel it,” says Werner partner Gordon VeneKlasen. 

What may be most telling for art’s long-term prospects in the capital: Emerging artists are moving there for the cheap rent, and project spaces have been popping up in grittier neighborhoods—typically a harbinger of a creative flowering. 

Welsh artist Neal Rock bought a building to use for an artist residency and exhibitions. An inaugural group show was set to open in July. “It’s Athens, with this amazing history, the Acropolis,” says Rock, a self-described Grecophile. “It feels like a place where people are making work because they want to make work.”