We visit the Amanzoe hotel in Greece

Located on a hilltop near the Greek harbour town of Porto Heli, Amanzoe features column and cornice detailing throughout, as well as an expansive reflecting pool

(Image credit: Aman)

Ed Tuttle is behind the abstractly Grecian forms of Amanzoe, the celebrated hospitality brand’s Greek outpost. The backdrop to our recent summer fashion story, it is only the third Aman property in the Mediterranean (following Montenegro’s Aman Sveti Stefan and Turkey’s Amanruya). American architect Tuttle has been a defining force in the famous brand’s architectural incarnations, having designed seven of them, including the very first one, Amanpuri in Thailand in 1988. Here, on the eastern edge of the Peloponnese, a short drive from Athens, he drew on Aman’s winning combination of peace and experiential drama, as well as the location’s spirit, sea and sun, to craft a perfectly poised 38-suite destination outside the picturesque town of Porto Heli.

Amanzoe: nodding to classical Greek architecture and the landscape

The low, gentle composition is not only refreshingly clean and contemporary, featuring serene neutral colours and minimalist architecture; it also elegantly hints at classical Greek architecture, as displayed by the column and cornice detailing throughout. At the same time, the whole feels entirely embedded into its green landscape, offering 360-degree vistas towards the sea and surrounding verdant nature. Amanzoe is smartly placed at the top of a gentle hill, just a ten-minute walk from the heart of Porto Heli.

Marble and stone appear throughout, becoming a key building block in Amazoe’s architectural identity. They are ‘the most basic and noble materials of Greece’, in the words of Tuttle (who passed away at the age of 75 in 2020). There is beige-coloured Sinai Pearl Antique and dark-green Guatemala Verde marble, mixed with the region’s traditional dry stone cladding. At the same time, timber elements, such as the outdoor terraces’ pergolas, connect the spaces further to the local landscape. Amanzoe includes a handful of private villas, created in similar style, and placed alongside the hotel offering.

aman.com

A version of this story appears in the June Travel Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).