The Rooster: sixteen houses above Livadia Bay
How the houses are laid out on the hills above Livadia, what they are built from, and what a day there involves.
Antiparos is the small island next to Paros, reached by ferry from there. The Rooster opened in 2021 above Livadia Bay, on the island's wilder side. Most beaches on Antiparos are sandy and sheltered, but Livadia is open to the north, and when the meltemi blows it becomes the island's surf beach.
There is no main building with corridors. The sixteen houses are spread across some 30 acres of hills, untamed gardens and dunes, and each was placed for its view, its shade, its shelter from the wind and its distance from the next. “At The Rooster, we don’t have guestrooms or suites. You stay in your own home,” the hotel says.
Athens studio VOIS modelled the houses on the katikies, the island's low farmers' cottages, and built them in tawny local stone with plaster the colour of sand. Every house has its own pool and an outdoor shower; inside are driftwood four-posters and Balinese daybeds. They sleep up to three or five guests. Not all of them look out to sea, so if that matters, ask for Haven of Tranquility or Love Shack.
The day has a few fixed points. Yoga is at nine every morning in the open-air pavilion. Breakfast, served until noon, is laid out around a lemon tree or under the pergola, with sourdough baked each day at the hotel's farm in Kambos, 1.5 km away. Lunch runs until five, and if you would rather stay by your own pool, salads and skewers can be brought over.
Down at the bay, beach chairs, parasols and paddleboards are free for guests, and on windy days the hotel's instructors pick out a surfboard. George “Sargos” Marianos, who has fished around the island all his life, takes guests out in his wooden kaiki; whatever you catch goes into kakavia, the islands' fisherman's soup.
Dinner is in the Secret Garden, a courtyard among rock walls. Head chef Simos Triantafyllou cooks over an open fire with what the fishermen and the farm bring in that day: piri-piri squid with samphire and burnt lemon, say, or bucatini with slow-braised goat ragout, served on plates made by the hotel's own potter. The bars stay open until 1 am.
The hotel is open from May to early October; check the dates for the coming season before you plan. For more room, The Farmhouse in Kambos has three bedrooms and a plunge pool and sleeps up to six, with farmers, beekeepers and shepherds for neighbours.
