Inside a Restored Neoclassical Mansion in the Heart of Athens
Featured Property A77 Suites
Opening 2019
Designed by Stage Design Office
Location Athens, Greece
Featured Visionary John Kyritsis
This film was created in collaboration
A noble Athenian family built this mansion in 1880 and lived in it for half a century. Then it was sold. A printing house moved in. Then a clothing manufacturer. Then a boutique. Then it was abandoned entirely. John Kyritsis, the former CEO of Andronis Exclusive, walked through it in 2018 and saw something nobody else had bothered to look for. He spent two years restoring it with the Archaeology and Antiquities Service of Greece and Athens design studio Mutiny. Today it is 12 suites in the heart of Plaka, at the foot of the Acropolis, on one of the oldest streets in the ancient world. The only thing that changed is that it finally feels like itself again.
John Kyritsis was 14 years old when his father took him to the InterContinental in Athens for coffee. The way the staff moved, the way a simple meeting was transformed into something memorable, the sense that care had been applied to every detail: it told him immediately that hospitality was what he wanted to do with his life. He studied hotel business administration, worked at the Imperial Hilton in Rhodes, moved to the Grande Bretagne in Athens, managed luxury hotels in Santorini, became Managing Director of Andronis Exclusive, and then founded Axia Hospitality in 2012. He had spent thirty years understanding how hotels work before he walked into the abandoned building at 77 Adrianou Street and decided to make something of his own. The mansion was built in the late 19th century, home to an aristocratic Athenian family for generations before being sold off in pieces. A printing house on the first floor. A clothing manufacturer in the basement. A boutique at street level. Then decades of nothing. By the time John found it, little remained beyond the walls. He began the restoration in 2018, working with Greece's Archaeology and Antiquities Service to preserve the original staircase, the wrought iron balconies, the pale blue shutters, the gypsum ceilings and the elaborate cornice detailing that the building had been carrying since the 19th century. A77 Suites opened in August 2019, twelve rooms, and the boutique that had always been on the ground floor still there, now curated by his wife Constantina.
"The hotel chose me. I didn't choose it."
John Kyritsis - owner
Plaka is quieter than it sounds from outside it. Adrianou Street carries visitors from Monastiraki toward the Acropolis all day, but the building at number 77 holds the noise at the door. Athens design studio Mutiny handled the interiors, combining contemporary minimalism with the original neoclassical fabric. The gypsum ceilings with their original cornices remain intact. The Courtyard Suite retains the stonework of the former stables below. Marble floors, brass detailing and black and white photographs by Katerina Messini run through rooms that are soundproofed well enough to feel like a private apartment rather than a city hotel. Directly across the street stands the Benizelos Mansion, described as the oldest surviving house in Athens. There is no restaurant. There is no gym. Breakfast arrives in the suite each morning from five different menus. The check-in happens through the boutique, because that is the way it has always worked here: you enter through Constantina's curation of Greek craft and international fashion before the hotel gradually reveals itself beyond. Little Grec occupies a dedicated corner of the boutique, celebrating Greek folk art and heritage from the 16th through the 19th centuries in contemporary form. Argalios bags, woven on traditional looms by a Greek family business, sit alongside labels from across the world. The idea, as Constantina has described it, is that this should feel nothing like the hotels from Bali, Tulum and Mykonos that have all started to look the same.
John Kyritsis was 14 years old when his father first took him to this part of Athens. The street, the neighbourhood and its relationship to the Acropolis became woven into his sense of the city from that point. His father died in 2019, the same year A77 opened. John describes the discovery of the building on Adrianou Street as the hotel finding him rather than the other way around. He restored what was left: the walls, the original staircase, the balconies, the shutters, the plasterwork that the building had been carrying for more than a hundred years. He brought his wife Constantina in to run the boutique on the ground floor. Today he walks the same street with his daughter. The memories, feelings and experiences that hospitality gave his father he is now giving her.
Twelve suites across five types. The Petite Suite at 22 square metres is the entry point and already more considered than its name suggests. The Courtyard Suite at 28 square metres holds stonework from the original stables. The Elegant Suite at 34 square metres looks out over Adrianou Street and the Acropolis beyond. The Iconic Suite at 31 square metres has a private rooftop terrace and a jacuzzi positioned directly toward the Acropolis, which at night is lit from below and visible from the water. All suites are soundproofed. Breakfast comes to the room. In-room massage and styling are available. The boutique at street level, through which every guest enters, carries Argalios woven bags, Little Grec folk art pieces, Greek designers and international labels. The Acropolis is nine minutes on foot. The Ancient Agora is three. The Monastiraki flea market is four.
"I wanted guests to have the feeling of being welcomed into an Athenian home. Not a hotel. A home. People should leave knowing the team personally and carrying something emotional with them. Memories, feelings and new experiences."
John Kyritsis - Owner
The hotel opened in August 2019, the building at 77 Adrianou Street has now been a family home, a printing house, a clothing manufacturer, a ruin and a hotel, in that order, over the course of more than a hundred years. John Kyritsis restored it in the same year his father died, on the same street his father had walked with him as a child. He now walks it with his daughter. Directly opposite stands the oldest surviving house in Athens. Some streets accumulate that kind of weight without trying. Adrianou Street is one of them, and A77 Suites sits inside it as though it always belonged there.
