Ten Days in Western Crete
A Designer’s Notes
We spent ten days in Crete at the very beginning of May, and I’d recommend that window to anyone: the light is long and clear, the temperature sits exactly where you want it, and the places worth seeing aren’t yet shoulder to shoulder busy.
Chania sunrise
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Where we stayed
We were based at the Atlantica Kalliston, on Agioi Apostoloi beach in Nea Kydonia, twenty minutes or so from Chania, freshly through a major refurbishment. I can never quite switch the designer’s eye off and what struck me was the palette: washed indigo and chalky Aegean set against oatmeal, raw plaster and bleached, sun-paled wood — layered with natural materials at every turn: linen, rattan, rough timber, unpolished stone, the odd hand-thrown ceramic. An easy, almost Ibiza-like calm, with the landscape outside plainly setting the tone within.
A short walk along the beach at sunrise is not to be missed. As the first rays of light stretch across the Aegean, the shoreline is bathed in a soft golden glow. Passing Domes Noruz (Autograph Collection) along the way, we found ourselves returning time and again - partly for the food, but equally for its effortlessly confident atmosphere. The design feels distinctly modern Greek, with earthy neutrals, sea blues, natural timber and local artwork throughout.
Their tagline, “Built to blend in, bound to stand out”, is refreshingly accurate. Topos, the hotel's neo-Greek seafood restaurant, was perfect for a lunch time small plate and a glass of local wine, while evenings at the Raw Bar became something of a ritual, with beautifully prepared sushi, eclectic small plates and the most sublime miso-glazed black cod.
Where we ate, and why each one is worth a mention
Chania Harbour
La Bodega was a tip from an old client, and one of the best of the trip. It sits on the edge of Chania’s old harbour, looking across to the Venetian lighthouse but tucked away from the noisier end. It may be small, but the wine list is mighty — well over a hundred labels, mostly Greek, arranged by flavour rather than region. Everything on the plate is genuinely, carefully sourced, and the service is warm without ever hovering. It reminded me so much of our beloved and much-missed Pairings — the same instinct that a small room with real care in it beats a grand one with none.
Periplous, in the old tanneries quarter at Tabakaria, sits in a late-nineteenth-century industrial building handled with exactly the restraint I wish more conversions had: contemporary design laid lightly over the original, never fighting it. The terrace faces the sunset, the food is local seafood and a modern read on Cretan cooking from chef Christos Saridakis, served just as he intends it. We had the most stunning sunset there and for that and the food, its top of our ‘must go to again’ list.
Gramvousa, out at Kaliviani in the north-west, is the opposite kind of pleasure and just as good. The recipes go back to the eighteenth century, much of the veg comes straight from the garden, as does its olive oil, thyme honey, oregano and sage. Open-air, wooden, a little vintage, with the Gulf of Kissamos in front of you. Honest, rooted cooking in an honest, rooted barn.
Where we explored
We drove a scenic inland route up through Elos - the Valley of the Chestnuts - and on through Kissamos, all terraced hillsides and villages that haven’t tidied themselves up for visitors. We spent a day at Elafonissi, the pink-sand lagoon at the south-west tip, and got happily lost in the back streets of Rethymno, where Venetian and Ottoman layers stack on top of one another and every worn doorway asked to be photographed. Early May was the gift throughout: warm enough, quiet enough, the colours softer without the high-summer glare.
Knossos - what’s here, through a designer’s eyes
And then Knossos, just outside Heraklion: the great Minoan palace, the better part of four thousand years old.
The scale impressed as much as the remaining colour. The Minoans weren’t timid - deep terracotta reds, ochres, a particular blue - and their columns are unlike anything that came after: tapering downward rather than up, set on stone, topped with a simple rounded capital. The Throne Room is reckoned the oldest in Europe, its alabaster seat flanked by griffins; the frescoes - the bull-leapers, the dolphins, the so-called Prince of the Lilies - are bright, rhythmic, full of movement.
It’s worth knowing that much of what you see is early-twentieth-century reconstruction, and the colour is part guesswork. As someone who tests a single paint over three days before committing, I found that oddly moving: even here, even now, people are making confident decisions about colour and then living with them. Most of the original finds sit in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, which deserves its own afternoon.
The Thread Home
The thing I didn’t expect was to come home and find Crete already waiting in our own work. The faded reds of the Venetian harbour, the Minoan ochres at Knossos - they’re the very palette we’d been living in on our Clifton Green project here in York: Zoffany’s Venetian Red on the hall walls, ochres pulled straight from the original encaustic tiles, a stair runner hand-templated to sit with the geometry of those tiles. We’re finishing the dining room there now, with the drawing room about to begin - so the conversation with that house isn’t over yet. Good colour doesn’t really belong to a place or a period. It endures, and it travels.
Three lessons came home with me, and none of them are really about Greece: comfort is the truest luxury; let a building keep its character; and colour, chosen with confidence, is what a room remembers.
If you’re planning Crete, I have far more than this.