One&Only arrives on Kéa, the Athenians’ island hideaway

What’s the buzz? For decades, well-heeled Athenians have sailed to chic second homes on an island unknown to many foreign tourists, or caught the ferry from the port of Lavrio on Fridays after work. Without a link from the Greek capital’s main port of Piraeus, where a ferry armada serves better-known islands such as Mykonos and Santorini, Kéa has avoided mass tourism and presented a determinedly unshowy slice of the Cyclades. 

But perhaps the most notable opening anywhere in Greece this year may be about to change that. One&Only, the luxury resort chain that shares an owner (Kerzner International) with the vast Atlantis hotel in Dubai, has just started welcoming guests to a startling hillside resort set around a formerly undeveloped beach on Kéa’s rugged west coast. It opens officially on June 1.

Location, location, location: Kéa, 12 miles long, six across, is the closest inhabited island of the Cyclades to Athens, lying about 15 miles east of Lavrio, which is itself 30 minutes’ drive from Athens International Airport. The car ferry to Kéa’s northern port takes an hour before a 25-minute drive to the resort at Vroskopos Bay. Guests will more likely take a private speedboat direct to the resort (30 minutes), a chopper from the airport to its helipad (15 minutes) or a private boat (80 minutes) from One&Only Aesthesis, a sister resort that opened last November in Athens’ southern coastal suburbs. 

Checking in: There’s something of the Bond villain’s lair about the resort as I approach from the sea to be greeted on its concrete dock by staff smartly dressed in various shades of beige. Narrow, zigzagging roads served by a fleet of golf buggies rise steeply above the beach, delivering guests to the 63 modernist villas set into the hillside, all with private eight-metre infinity pools and stunning sea views. Fourteen privately owned homes (there are more to come) will soon join the resort’s inventory, the largest boasting six bedrooms.

Each villa is built on supporting walls made from the grey rock that was excavated during the landscaping work, which started more than five years ago. Vast sliding doors open out to pools that look as if they have been carved from single slabs of green marble.

Inside, vaulted ceilings and picture windows illuminate limestone floors and acres of marble. The look, conceived by veteran resort designer John Heah (whose other clients have included Aman Resorts, Four Seasons and the Maybourne hotel group), is as luxurious as minimalism can be while honouring the materials and techniques traditionally used on the island.

What to do: The resort encourages indolence like few others I’ve stayed in, my villa’s privacy, size and views making it a destination in its own right. The pay-off for the universal vistas is topographical: the hill is steep and chauffeured golf buggies summoned via WhatsApp are the easiest way to move around, especially when the summer heat takes hold.

Down below is Bond Beach Club, which will soon be open to day trippers as well as hotel guests. Further uphill is a three-storey spa — the biggest One&Only has — with pavilions for the gym and yoga studio. It all rises up — and up — past the villas, the sports centre (tennis, padel) and kids’ club towards the main building, a modernist fortress with an airy atrium that is home to the restaurant and a 35-metre showstopper of a swimming pool in green marble, with views west across the sea and east to a strangely bewitching hillside criss-crossed by centuries-old dry stone walls and the soft contour lines of long-abandoned terracing.

Leaving the resort takes some doing but is worth it: steep concrete and dirt roads rise high over the hills into the island’s interior. One morning I get lost in the alleys of Ioulida, the tiny hillside town that serves as Kéa’s capital, and finish up with lunch at I Piatsa, a delightful taverna where, during my visit, the owner’s daughter strips rosemary stems on a spare table under a photo of her father’s football team.

The next day I hike down a steep-sided valley to the coastal ruins of Karthaia, one of four ancient city-states that dotted the island, which was known in antiquity as Keos or Ceos. My guide is Petroula Tatsopoulou, a Greek archaeologist employed by the resort during construction. She is still full of excitement over the rare ruins of an agricultural settlement she has unearthed near the helipad, and plans to share excavation duties with guests. 

I also take one of the hotel’s e-bikes for an extremely hilly ride to the blue-and-white-painted monastery of Panagia Kastriani before lunch at Aristos, a seafood institution in the marina village of Vourkari.

Kéa is surrounded by notable wrecks including that of the Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, which was sunk by a German mine while serving as a hospital ship in 1916. Local diver and businessman Yannis Tzavelakos will soon run the resort’s dive centre (he tells me that commercial access to the wrecks has only been negotiated in recent years).

What about the food? Greek and extremely good. Atria, the resort’s main restaurant, set around an indoor olive tree, offers seafood grilled to perfection and a Greek salad that is a work of art (the spanakopita gyozas are the only really radical twist on traditional dishes). The wine list, too, honours often overlooked local quality, with 150 Greek bottles making up 70 per cent of the list, most from small family-run vineyards.

There are more casual menus at the beach club, at the main pools and at Kosmos, a bar that crowns the whole resort. During one stunning sunset there I briefly put down my cocktail to peer through a telescope. I see, in perfect silhouette, the columns of the Temple of Poseidon on the mainland at Cape Sounion, an ancient symbol of riches that now looks back at another on an island that may struggle to preserve its claim as the Aegean’s best-kept secret.

The damage: Villas for up to two adults and two children start at €2,150 per night in low season, including breakfast, rising to €3,350 per night in much of July and August. On Kéa, such rates are wild — at the island’s two existing five-star hotels, Porto Kea Suites and Ydor, doubles start at around €155 and €210 respectively.

Elevator pitch: Minimalist luxury at a maximalist price.

Simon Usborne was a guest of One&Only Kéa Island (oneandonlyresorts.com/kea-island)

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