How do you get to The Rooster on Antiparos?

Paros has its own airport with daily flights from Athens, and that is the ordinary way in. From there you drive to the southern tip of Paros and cross to Antiparos on the car barge, which takes vehicles as well as people, and the hotel will organise that leg for you if you would rather not think about it. There is a second route for anyone short of time: helicopter transfers run from Athens and land on the helipad on Antiparos itself, and from there The Rooster is fifteen minutes by car. Neither one is complicated. The island being slightly awkward to reach is a large part of why it is still the way it is.

What are the rooms like at The Rooster on Antiparos?

They are separate one-bedroom houses of honey-coloured island stone, scattered across the hillside, each with its own pool and a large patio and a view of either the sea or the valley. Mine was one of the ones down near the beach and the spa. Inside they are kept in sand and beige and the materials do the work: an old oak table, a four-poster made from driftwood, terracotta urns, floors finished in the smooth plaster you see across this sea and in Morocco. The bathrooms are open-plan and large and there is a rain shower outdoors. What is waiting in the house when you arrive tells you what the place thinks you are here for: yoga mats and beach towels, books by the bed, a speaker, something decent to eat, and a cooler of good wine for the hour the sun goes down.

Is there a beach at The Rooster, and can you swim there?

The hotel stands above Livadia and the beach is right there, long and pale with dunes behind it. It is also one of the exposed beaches on this island, so it catches the wind, and with the wind come chop and, on some days, seagrass along the water line. On a still morning the colours down there are spectacular and I would not trade the view for a calmer bay. The hotel puts out parasols and low seating on the sand, which is a more modest arrangement than rows of loungers and suits the beach better. For proper swimming, drive five minutes to the sheltered coves on the other side; Soros is my own favourite and has been for several summers.

Does The Rooster have a pool and a spa?

Every house has its own pool on its patio. There is no shared pool anywhere on the property, which is deliberate: the place is built so you spend the day at your own door. The pools are small. The spa is called the House of Healing, it stands as a building of its own, and it works in Ayurvedic treatments, reiki and Qi Gong, which is a narrower and more serious offer than the menu of massages most hotels put in front of you. I had a treatment there. The room is bare and cool and made of natural materials, and afterwards you can sit by a small pool that belongs to the spa and to nobody else, which is where the hour after actually happens.

Where do you eat at The Rooster, and what is the food?

There is an open-air bar built of pale stone with turned timber stools along it, where the day ends, and a restaurant called the Secret Garden in a gravel courtyard behind a wall, with a tree in the middle of it and lights strung overhead. The cooking is Mediterranean and built on what the island and the sea hand over. The bread comes to the table wrapped in a cloth and is better than it needs to be, and the pasta with clams is the dish I have ordered on more than one visit. Breakfast and the hours in between happen in the same main house, looking down at the bay.

When is the best time to go to Antiparos?

I have gone in the first week of July four different summers and that is the window I would give you. The weather is settled, the sea is warm enough and the island has not filled up. August on Antiparos is a different island with different prices and a different mood. If you can come in June or in the second half of September, the hotel and the place are quieter still, and quiet is what you are paying for here.

Inspection · Livadia, Antiparos, Greece

The Rooster

Sixteen stone cottages up a valley above Livadia Bay, reached by a dirt road with one sign on it. The only house on this site I have been back to four summers.

A one-bedroom house near the beach

Book The Rooster with me Tell me the dates and who is travelling, and I arrange it with the house directly. In English, Italian or Spanish.

Antiparos is the small one. You fly to Paros, drive to the southern tip of it and cross on the barge that carries the cars, and you land somewhere that has stayed out of the way of what happened to the rest of the Cyclades. That last crossing is the whole reason. The Rooster is on the far side of the island, above Livadia, and you reach it on a dirt road with a single wooden sign on it. The sign says the name and, underneath, the word Slow. I have now been four summers in a row, which is a thing I do not do.

The entrance at The Rooster, a gap in a dry-stone wall closed by tall timber doors, with tall feathered grasses in front of it and the sea beyond — The front door of the hotel. There is no lobby behind it in any sense you would recognise.

Getting there, and what you find

For anyone who cannot spare the day, there is a second way in: helicopters run from Athens to the helipad on Antiparos, and The Rooster is a quarter of an hour by car from it. The hotel will also take the Paros leg off your hands and meet you at the barge. Either way you arrive on the same track.

The buildings are scattered up a valley among ordinary houses and farm plots, which is the first surprise: the hotel does not sit apart from the place, it sits inside it. Sixteen separate stone houses in honey-coloured island stone, a main house with the bar and the dining room in it, and dry-stone walls and planting between them. Bougainvillea, bamboo, and tall grasses that make a sound in the wind all afternoon.

What there is almost none of is signage, reception desks, or the apparatus of arrival. You come up the track, somebody meets you, and that is the end of the formalities.

A weathered timber sign at The Rooster carved with the hotel's name and the word Slow under an arrow, against a deep blue sky — The only sign on the road. The word underneath is instruction and not decoration.

A pale gravel path at The Rooster running through low scrub towards long stone buildings, with a flat headland and the sea behind — The walk between the cottages and the main house. Everything here is done on foot.

Tall timber doors in a dry-stone wall at The Rooster at blue hour, with feathered pennisetum grasses in front and a terracotta urn to one side — The same doors at the blue half hour. The grasses are the loudest thing on the property.

The main house

One long room with a stone wall on one side and the bay through the doors on the other, furnished in cane and timber, with a bar of pale stone and heavy turned stools. The whole middle of the day happens here if you want it to, and a reasonable number of people never leave their own cottage at all.

The restraint is consistent and it is the owner's. Athanasia Comninos chose what is in these rooms herself, and she was after something she had found travelling in the East, which is a kind of calm that does not announce itself. It is an unusual thing to feel in the Cyclades, where the going style is white and blue and photographed.

The dining room at The Rooster with stone walls, cane chairs and timber tables, open through tall doors to the bay and a palm — Breakfast and most of the afternoon. The doors on the sea side stay open all day.

The bar at The Rooster, a counter of pale blocks with heavy turned timber stools along it under a reed ceiling — The stools are solid and heavy and do not move easily, which turns out to be the point.

A sitting room at The Rooster with a pale sofa, a low timber bench as a table and a planted terrace through the glass — A sitting room in one of the cottages. The furniture is low and there is very little of it.

The house

They are houses and not rooms. Separate one-bedroom buildings spread across the slope, some down by the beach and the spa, some well above with the long view, and a golf cart that comes to collect you from either end. Mine was one of the lower ones, a few minutes from the water on foot.

It had its own pool on the patio, an oak table, a bed made of driftwood, and a floor of the smooth plaster you find around this sea and across in Morocco. Open-plan bathroom, a rain shower outside, lighting kept low after dark. The description sounds like a hundred other houses written up the same way. The difference is that here nothing is a gesture: the urn is a working urn, the broom by the door is the broom they sweep with. What was waiting inside says the rest: two yoga mats, beach towels, books worth opening by the bed, a speaker, something to eat, and a cooler with good wine in it for six in the evening.

The pool is small. That matters, so I will say it plainly: there is no communal pool anywhere on the property, and the one on your patio is the one you get. It is for sitting in with a drink at the end of the afternoon. It is not for swimming.

A bed with a four-poster frame of pale driftwood at The Rooster under a beamed ceiling, with a small mirror and a folding stand against the wall — The frame is driftwood and the room is otherwise almost bare. It is enough.

Two basins side by side under separate mirrors in an open-plan bathroom at The Rooster, with a timber door beyond — Two basins, and no door between the bathroom and the room. Worth knowing who you are travelling with.

A sitting room at The Rooster with a low daybed, a timber armchair, a leather pouf and a broom standing against the white wall by the door — The broom by the door is not a prop. Sand comes in with you every time.

A sunken courtyard at The Rooster walled in rough stone, with built-in seating, white cushions and a hammock strung across the corner under an open square of sky — A courtyard cut into the slope, open to the sky and sheltered from the wind on every side.

A small rectangular pool on a stone terrace at The Rooster with a cushioned lounger beside it, bushes and a pergola of rough poles above — The pool at the cottage. Two strokes across, and that is the whole of it.

A terrace at The Rooster under a pergola of rough timber poles throwing hard striped shadows across the stone and the loungers — Two in the afternoon. The pergola does most of the work the walls would have to do otherwise.

A sunken white courtyard at The Rooster lined with long built-in benches and cushions, with small black stools set in front of them and openings in the wall onto the sea — The sunken lounge, which is where people end up before dinner without deciding to.

The afternoon

There is a second patio further down, paved in terracotta herringbone with a long narrow pool in it and a woven awning overhead that breaks the sun into spots. Loungers, towels, banana leaves. It is the one place on the property that feels designed to be photographed, and it still works.

A long narrow pool at The Rooster in a terrace of terracotta herringbone brick, under a woven awning that scatters light, with banana plants at the edge — The awning is woven loosely, so what falls on the water is light and not shade.

Cane loungers at The Rooster with striped towels folded on them and slippers beside, under the dappled shade of the woven awning — Towels and slippers are laid out and nobody tells you they are there.

A member of staff in a green shirt leaning over a round timber table at The Rooster to pour a bottle of Billecart-Salmon brut into a glass, with a cooler and a lantern on the table and the bay and headland behind — Six in the evening on the terrace above the bay. The cooler comes out and the day changes gear.

Dinner

The restaurant is called the Secret Garden and it is behind a wall, on gravel, under a tree, with lights overhead. The kitchen is Mediterranean and works off the island and the sea, and the cooking is plain in the way that takes effort. The bread comes to the table wrapped in a cloth. The pasta with clams is the dish I have ordered on more than one of these summers.

The bar runs before and after, and the sunken lounge fills up in between. The sequence takes care of itself and nobody manages you through it.

A soft pink menu card at The Rooster printed with a small rooster mark and the hotel's name, lying on a stone table in dappled shade — The rooster is the only piece of branding anywhere on the property.

A white cloth opened on a table at The Rooster holding torn pieces of pale crusted bread, beside a black carafe and a printed menu — The bread, which arrives wrapped and warm, and which people talk about afterwards.

A speckled ceramic bowl of short pasta with clams and chopped herbs at The Rooster, with a fork resting in it — Clams and pasta. The kitchen leaves things alone, which is harder than it looks.

The House of Healing

The spa has a name of its own, a building of its own, and a narrower idea than most: Ayurvedic treatments, reiki, Qi Gong. Whether that appeals is a matter of temperament. I had a treatment and the part I would come back for is what happens afterwards. There is a small pool that belongs to the spa alone, and you are left at the side of it for as long as you want. Most hotels hand you a herbal tea and a bill at that moment. Here nobody appears.

The building itself is the quietest on the property, stone and water and a woven ceiling, cool at any hour, with nothing in it to look at.

A large terracotta lamp standing in a bed of prickly pear against a white wall and a dry-stone wall at The Rooster, under a clear sky — A lamp the size of a child, standing in the cactus. It comes on at dusk.

A room at The Rooster under a dark thatched ceiling with a shallow sunken basin of water in the floor and plants in the corners — The ceiling is laid thatch, and it takes the sound out of the room completely.

Looking down at a pair of worn leather shoes on the edge of a stone trough of running water at The Rooster, with red and orange flower heads floating in it — Flowers go into the water in the morning and stay there all day.

What it is, and who it is for

It is not a resort and it does not behave like one. There is no communal pool, no beach club, no programme. The island it sits on has stayed quiet because it is small and because the ferry puts off most people. What you are buying is a stone house with a pool on a hillside above a bay, a kitchen worth walking down to, and a week in which nothing is organised on your behalf.

I have come back four summers. I do not do that, and I have been to enough places on this sea to know what it means. The one thing I would change is the swimming, and the swimming is five minutes down the road.

The sun dropping into the sea beyond Livadia Bay seen from a stone terrace at The Rooster, with cushions on a low wall and lanterns in the foreground — Seven in the evening from the terrace above the bay. Everyone stops for this and nobody organises it.

The sunken lounge at The Rooster at night, lit low between rough stone walls, with the moon in the strip of dark sky above it — The same hotel at eleven, from the top of the steps, with the moon doing the lighting.

The five

What I would tell a friend before they left.

Come in the first days of July, or earlierEarly July is when I keep going, and the island is still itself: the hotel has room in it, the roads are quiet and the people who live here have not yet stopped having conversations with visitors. By the end of the month the Cyclades are a different proposition. If your dates are open, come earlier still. Nothing about this place improves with more people in it.
Livadia is for looking at, Soros is for swimmingThe beach below the hotel is one of the exposed ones on this island and it catches the wind, which means chop on many days and seagrass washed up on some of them. On a still morning the colour of that water is as good as anything in the Cyclades. The sheltered swimming is a short drive away, in a run of shallow coves with small beach bars on them, and Soros is the one I keep going back to. Plan the swimming around that and leave Livadia to be looked at.
Ask which house you are getting, and where it sitsThese are separate one-bedroom houses spread across the hillside, some down near the beach and the spa, some well up the slope with the long view. They are not interchangeable and the walk between the top and the bottom is a real walk. A golf cart comes and collects you whenever you want one, so neither end is a problem, but you should know before you arrive whether you are waking up next to the water or above it. Say which you want when you book.
Your own pool is the only poolEach house has one, and the hotel has no communal pool at all, which is a decision and not an omission. The private pools are small, the kind you get into at four in the afternoon and stay in. If you are travelling with people who want a pool to swim lengths in, this is the thing to know before you book and not after.
Eat there, and say so earlyThe restaurant sits in a gravel courtyard behind a stone wall, under a tree and a line of lights, and the kitchen works off what the island and the sea give it. The bread arrives wrapped in a cloth and is worth the wait on its own. The hotel is small and the tables fill, so say at check-in which evenings you want and they will hold them.
The shop is not a gift shopAthanasia Comninos owns the place and chose what is in it, down to the robes, the yellow beach towels and the velvet friulane slippers that the Venetians wear. The same eye runs through the cottages, so what is on the shelves is what you have been living with for a week. Most hotel shops sell you a reminder of the hotel. This one sells you the thing itself.

The list goes on. Guests who book with me receive the rest before departure.

Before you book

The questions people send me about The Rooster.

How do you get to The Rooster on Antiparos?: Paros has its own airport with daily flights from Athens, and that is the ordinary way in. From there you drive to the southern tip of Paros and cross to Antiparos on the car barge, which takes vehicles as well as people, and the hotel will organise that leg for you if you would rather not think about it. There is a second route for anyone short of time: helicopter transfers run from Athens and land on the helipad on Antiparos itself, and from there The Rooster is fifteen minutes by car. Neither one is complicated. The island being slightly awkward to reach is a large part of why it is still the way it is.
What are the rooms like at The Rooster on Antiparos?: They are separate one-bedroom houses of honey-coloured island stone, scattered across the hillside, each with its own pool and a large patio and a view of either the sea or the valley. Mine was one of the ones down near the beach and the spa. Inside they are kept in sand and beige and the materials do the work: an old oak table, a four-poster made from driftwood, terracotta urns, floors finished in the smooth plaster you see across this sea and in Morocco. The bathrooms are open-plan and large and there is a rain shower outdoors. What is waiting in the house when you arrive tells you what the place thinks you are here for: yoga mats and beach towels, books by the bed, a speaker, something decent to eat, and a cooler of good wine for the hour the sun goes down.
Is there a beach at The Rooster, and can you swim there?: The hotel stands above Livadia and the beach is right there, long and pale with dunes behind it. It is also one of the exposed beaches on this island, so it catches the wind, and with the wind come chop and, on some days, seagrass along the water line. On a still morning the colours down there are spectacular and I would not trade the view for a calmer bay. The hotel puts out parasols and low seating on the sand, which is a more modest arrangement than rows of loungers and suits the beach better. For proper swimming, drive five minutes to the sheltered coves on the other side; Soros is my own favourite and has been for several summers.
Does The Rooster have a pool and a spa?: Every house has its own pool on its patio. There is no shared pool anywhere on the property, which is deliberate: the place is built so you spend the day at your own door. The pools are small. The spa is called the House of Healing, it stands as a building of its own, and it works in Ayurvedic treatments, reiki and Qi Gong, which is a narrower and more serious offer than the menu of massages most hotels put in front of you. I had a treatment there. The room is bare and cool and made of natural materials, and afterwards you can sit by a small pool that belongs to the spa and to nobody else, which is where the hour after actually happens.
Where do you eat at The Rooster, and what is the food?: There is an open-air bar built of pale stone with turned timber stools along it, where the day ends, and a restaurant called the Secret Garden in a gravel courtyard behind a wall, with a tree in the middle of it and lights strung overhead. The cooking is Mediterranean and built on what the island and the sea hand over. The bread comes to the table wrapped in a cloth and is better than it needs to be, and the pasta with clams is the dish I have ordered on more than one visit. Breakfast and the hours in between happen in the same main house, looking down at the bay.
When is the best time to go to Antiparos?: I have gone in the first week of July four different summers and that is the window I would give you. The weather is settled, the sea is warm enough and the island has not filled up. August on Antiparos is a different island with different prices and a different mood. If you can come in June or in the second half of September, the hotel and the place are quieter still, and quiet is what you are paying for here.

Something else you want to know? Write to me and I will answer it here.

The open-air bar at The Rooster at sundown, bentwood stools along a counter under a timber roof with the light going orange behind

Tables laid on gravel against a lit dry-stone wall at The Rooster at dusk, with a small tree and lanterns along the wall

The restaurant courtyard at The Rooster after dark, with strings of lights overhead, guests at the tables and a wine cooler in the foreground

Timber barn doors standing open at night at The Rooster, with a lit passage and a dark blue sky above

Livadia Bay seen from the road above, with a pile of dry stones in the foreground, the low white buildings along the shore and the headland behind

A timber board of breads and three small bowls of dips on a dark stone table at The Rooster, with spoons laid beside them

Arranged by hand

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