Aristide Hotel is a nine-room hotel with a focus on design, art and sustainability. The hotel has a garden, a rooftop bar with sea views, an indoors bar, an art gallery and an artists’ studio.
Created by a small and somewhat nomadic family of three, mother and two daughters, who came to Sweden as refugees, the hotel inherited its name by their Greek maternal grandfather who passed away before they were born.
The Hotel is a restored neoclassical mansion in the historical centre of Hermoupolis. The family has tried to inflict minimal changes on the structure, so as to keep the generous spaces and original architectural details, and the feel of a beautiful home rather than a hotel. The building is one of the last neoclassical houses that were built in Greece.
The guiding philosophy of the restoration was that materials, textures and colours of the house be real. And, because of the white marble staircase that meets visitors, Greek marble is at the heart of the hotel (guests will come across nine types of local marble in the different rooms). Furnishings and lighting are mostly contemporary. A few objects were designed by the owners (the black & brass lobby chandeliers).
The permanent collection of art can be found throughout the hotel’s rooms and public spaces and includes original and sometimes commissioned works by artists such as Christy Lee Rogers, Igor Skaletsky, and Riccardo Vecchio. It is heavily skewed towards portraiture and figurative art. The dedicated art gallery will host temporary exhibitions by the resident artists. The hotel offers a residency programme with accommodation in the hotel and exclusive use of the workshop for visual artists.
It has started a tree-planting project so as to offset some of the carbon footprint of guests’ travel to the island, sourcing mostly local and organic food, and it has no single-use plastics — the bathrooms have ceramic soap and shampoo dispensers, toothbrushes are made of bamboo, toothpaste is in pill form, and the slippers are biodegradable and compostable.
The family has tried to make a beautiful home that happens to also offer everything that guests expect from a hotel. The vibe is relaxed, staff is professional but genuinely warm and kind. The owners’ aim was to create a hotel that would be connected to its location, not just by virtue of being in Syros, but by being integrated in local culture and society.
