If you're looking for the most characterful location in the heart of Athens, then you can't beat Anafiotika, the higgledy-piggledy jumble of old tiled cottages and stepped pedestrian lanes right at the foot of the Acropolis. I say this with some conviction, having lived in various parts of the city over 15 years and ended up - very happily - living here (not in this building, sadly, but a short walk away). In the sea of concrete blocks and two-wheeled traffic that flows for miles around, it's an oasis of calm, colour and (occasionally crumbling) charm. Why crumbling? These workers' cottages, built in the mid 19th century by settlers from the island of Anafi while constructing the city's new Parliament building, are subject to preservation orders so arcane that some owners have just given up and let them dilapidate.
Not Ioannis Darzentas, though. He has turned his little cottage into a beautifully chic urban bolthole - think creamy plaster and marble surfaces, Art Deco fittings, Smeg fridge, Cocomat mattress, and a smart air-con system. The result is both cocooning and pleasingly Cycladic, a tiny 21st-century corner of his home island Santorini in the midst of the modern metropolis that is Athens. We're sure to make it our base for future stopovers here - if it's available of course (and judging from early interest, that's not a given).