How This Charming Greek Island Has Change into a Shocking Artwork Vacation spot—With Trendy Events and Pop-up Galleries

Touring to Hydra is often a calming, virtually soporific affair.

The tiny Greek island, solely 90 minutes by ferry from Athens, has been famend for generations as a dreamy, car-free outpost the place the one site visitors sound is the clip-clop of donkey hooves and essentially the most aggravating choice is which white wine to decide on with dinner. However I used to be heading there in mid-June, when Hydra is an offbeat cease on the art-world circuit and the power resembles that of a wild night time at Artwork Basel Miami Seashore.

The cultural frenzy had begun earlier that day in Athens, with brunch on the art-filled mansion of Greek collectors Dakis and Lietta Joannou. It was a lavish affair with a e book bazaar, buffet, and cocktail bar spilling onto expansive, sun-dappled patios the place movie star artists just like the Joannous’ buddy Jeff Koons mingled with elegantly coiffed curators from Zurich, London, and Cologne. 

Mid-afternoon, I joined a bunch of modern Greek artists in a convoy of taxis certain for the Athenian port of Piraeus, simply in time to catch the 5:30 p.m. quick ferry throughout the Saronic Gulf to Hydra. Quickly we had been all gaping in surprise on the first glimpse of the fabled island that Henry Miller memorably described in 1939 as having a “wild and bare perfection.” He praised its “aesthetically excellent” port, the place blue-and-white buildings cluster like a stadium above the harbor in “the very epitome of…flawless anarchy.” 

No sooner had we stepped ashore than we had been whisked through a five-minute boat trip to Mandraki Bay, the place the gallery Wilhelmina’s has operated in a splendid Nineteenth-century mansion since 2023. Because the solar dipped under the horizon, a raucous reception started for a bunch present known as “Magic Mirror,” which showcased 33 rising Greek and worldwide artists, nearly all of whom had been ladies. Wine flowed. Tables groaned with treats: plates of seafood, bowls of Greek salad, tubs of plump olives. Extra company arrived by foot and boat, till the gallery was mobbed. 

Because the festivities wound down at midnight, Wilhelmina von Blumenthal, the gallery’s younger U.Ok.-born director, defined that she had arrange in Hydra after a visit to the island within the fall of 2022. “It was all very natural,” she mentioned. “I got here for an extended weekend and stumbled throughout this beautiful house. On the time it was lined in cobwebs and stuffed with odds and ends, extra like a storage room. I mentioned to the proprietor, ‘This may make an attractive gallery,’ and he mentioned, ‘What a good suggestion!’ ” 

Von Blumenthal’s co-curator, Greek artist Irini Karayannopoulou, was thrilled by the enthusiastic turnout for the occasion. “We’d deliberate on 100 company,” she mused. “It may have been 150? Possibly 250?” Von Blumenthal piped in: “It’s  downside to have!”

There’s a pleasing symmetry to this creative resurgence on Hydra (pronounced ee-dra). The rocky speck within the Aegean has loved a mythic standing amongst vacationers for the reason that early twentieth century, when it first grew to become a hangout for bohemians akin to Miller and the Greek poet George Seferis. It was rediscovered after World Battle II by the likes of Lawrence Durrell and two Australian writers, George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who grew to become the anchors of a brand new expat group. In 1960, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen purchased a home on the island, the place he would dwell for the following seven years, a part of that point together with his Norwegian-born girlfriend and muse, Marianne Ihlen.

The Roloi Café, in an area close to the docks that was a well-liked artists’ hangout, shows an array of black-and-white images from that point. In current a long time, Hydra has maintained its magical aura, largely due to the absence of site visitors—everybody will get round by foot, boat, or donkey—and limits on new development. 

After I first visited the island a number of years in the past, I spent every week indulging in what Clift as soon as known as “summertime, playtime, easy-living time, lotus-eating time.” I not often strayed from the trail that led 100 yards from the port’s tavernas to Hydronetta, a chic bar perched on a cliffside. Between glasses of chilled white, I may descend steps carved into the rocks and dive immediately into the waves. Later, again in New York, it was laborious to consider visiting Greek associates once they advised me that sleepy Hydra was really a scorching spot for up to date artwork. And so final summer time I set forth to discover this encounter between tradition and nature on the lavishly eulogized Greek island.

After the reception at Wilhelmina’s, I didn’t have far to journey: I used to be staying on the new Mandraki Seashore Resort, a number of steps from the island’s solely sandy seashore. Though it presents state-of-the-art luxurious, together with non-public plunge swimming pools, its two-century-old constructions are part of quirky Greek folklore: they had been the previous shipyards and naval base of a revered, semi-piratical independence hero named Admiral Andreas Miaoulis, who set sail from this cove to defeat the Ottoman Turks in 1826. (Each June, the island holds the Miaoulia Pageant, a 10-day celebration that climaxes in a re-creation of the decisive naval battle of Geronda with fireworks, music, and the ceremonial burning of a ship within the harbor.) Poetically sufficient, Wilhelmina’s is situated in Miaoulis’s former mansion.

Because of the hawklike oversight of historic edifices by Hydriot authorities, renovation of the resort was painstaking. The supervisor, Arthur Fitzwilliam, who started coming to Hydra when he was a teen within the Nineteen Sixties, defined that after getting the lease in 2016, he spent 18 months acquiring permits to make sure that unique particulars had been maintained. “It was a mixture of structure and archaeology,” he mentioned. The method included replicating the chemical composition of the 18th-century mortar. “It took three months simply to search out the proper lab and to get them to interrupt down its six elements!”

The next night time, Hydra’s jet-set scene was in full swing. Ripples of pleasure could possibly be felt within the port as Dakis Joannou’s mega-yacht, cheekily named Responsible, glided to the docks. It was laborious to overlook: Jeff Koons designed the outside of the vessel with jagged geometric patterns, a Cubist-like effort based mostly on the “razzle dazzle” camouflage utilized by the British and U.S. navies in World Battle I, whose goal was to not cover ships however to make their outlines complicated.

Your entire harborfront was taken over by a road get together hosted by Joannou’s Deste Basis for Up to date Artwork. At nightfall, a parade of artwork lovers strolled east of the port to the Projectspace Slaughterhouse, one other up to date historic house. Since 2022, the cliffside gallery has been topped by Koons’s gilded, 30-foot-diameter Wind Spinner, a picture of Apollo, the historical Greek god of the solar and artwork, with metallic rays rotating round his round face. Inside, American artist George Rental’s disturbingly grotesque portraits had been on view in an exhibition known as “The Mad and the Lonely.” (“Feels like my relationship life,” quipped one customer.) Dakis, as Hydriots fondly name him, was fortunately working the group. After darkish, again on the port, Deste threw a free celebration: islanders and guests danced to dwell bands on a stage as wine, beer, and ouzo flowed, and souvlaki sandwiches had been handed out to one and all.

By the following afternoon, the artwork crowd had decamped and Hydra returned to its serene summer time tempo, with different low-key artwork websites revealing themselves like sculptural rocks at low tide. For the remainder of the week, utilizing the Mandraki Seashore Resort as a base, I began every day in time-honored Hydriot fashion—diving off the jetty, having a breakfast of fruit, Greek yogurt, and thick black espresso—then setting off on a unusual cultural tour.

Given the strict limits on new development on Hydra, it was maybe unsurprising that the string of artwork areas I visited had been, like my resort, all in charmingly renovated historic constructions. At nightfall in the future, I climbed the port’s steep, cobblestoned lanes and clambered beneath stone arches to go to the Previous Carpet Manufacturing unit, a recording studio that doubles as a gallery in an impressive mansion with image home windows and panoramic views. The exhibition, “The Warp of Time,” featured placing up to date tapestries by Helen Marden on the partitions that echoed the century-old handwoven carpet from the island’s Soutzoglou Carpets firm on the ground. “Weavings from 1924 under us, weavings from 2024 above,” mused proprietor Stephan Colloredo-Mansfeld, who runs the house together with his Russian-born companion and curator, Ekaterina Juskowsi. “We’re surrounded by continuity.” Within the courtyard, the phrase moonshine was projected on a wall and guests tasted samples of tsipouro, a sort of Greek brandy.

The subsequent night, I strolled one other winding lane to Hydrogoios Arts & Tradition, a part-time exhibition house that occupies a 240-year-old mansion. Von Blumenthal and Karayannopoulou had been internet hosting a continuation of their “Magic Mirror” present. The 2 curators, who promote rising artists, have gotten established on the island because the scrappy, bohemian counterpart to Deste. 

As musicians strummed and crowds chatted across the stone cistern, Ioanna Stroumpouli, Hydrogoios’s co-owner, and Tassos Lagadianos, its caretaker, proudly confirmed off the constructing’s vintage options. One room had a picket boat hull for a ceiling, and stone arches had been embedded within the entrance. The outside partitions had been a fortress-like thickness; they’d been constructed to guard the inhabitants from pirates. However they had been most excited to point out me the herb backyard. “These are our smelling herbs,” Stroumpouli mentioned, grinding up tiny contemporary leaves and placing them to my nostril. “Oregano. Rosemary. And this one may be very salty—I don’t even know its identify in Greek!”

There have been comfortable accidents. Whereas visiting the waterfront Historic Archives Museum of Hydra, I stumbled into the Hydra Ebook Membership. This bookstore and group middle, run by American expat Josh Hickey, is dedicated to the island’s wealthy literary and creative custom and has a strikingly designed namesake journal. Different areas I heard about by way of phrase of mouth. For 25 years, the artist Dimitrios Antonitsis has curated exhibits in areas across the island as a part of the Hydra College Initiatives, I used to be knowledgeable, together with “the outdated schoolhouse.”

He doesn’t promote himself on an internet site or social media, however I managed to search out him within the Lyceum, or “new schoolhouse,” a string of empty lecture rooms the place he was presiding over an interesting group present that included an astonishing assortment of surreal gold jewellery made by cult British artist Leonora Carrington in 2008. (A extra everlasting jewellery exhibit is artist Elena Votsi’s boutique within the port city; she creates necklaces that play with the normal evil-eye appeal, summary variations of the solar and mountains, and bronze pictures of island donkeys.)

Everybody on the artwork areas was so amiable and open that almost all nights I’d someway discover myself invited to sundown cocktails at Hydronetta or the Windmill Bar, the place tables and chairs had been set round a medieval stone turret. (The landmark is often known as the “Sophia Loren windmill,” because it was featured in her 1957 movie Boy on a Dolphin.) A bunch dinner could be held on the eatery known as “the hen girl,” or beneath the gnarled olive tree at Xeri Elia Douskos café, the setting for a well-known {photograph} of Cohen strumming a guitar subsequent to Clift. The festivities would proceed on the tiny sq. fronting 1821 Hydra, a cocktail bar that sits on the middle of a focus of nightspots jokingly known as the Bermuda Triangle: “You enter and someway get misplaced,” German-born artwork curator Katharina Bosch, who spends her summers on Hydra, warned me. “You take a look at your watch and notice it’s 3 a.m.”

And each night time, I’d both stroll across the coast alongside a footpath lit by the moon and stars, or take a ship throughout glassy waters, again to Mandraki. 

Islands can really feel like self-contained worlds. I knew that small ferries repeatedly left from the principle port to different corners of Hydra, however in the summertime warmth they appeared like impossibly far-flung provinces. Then, on my final day, I used to be persuaded to take an expedition with one of many artists I had met at Wilhelmina’s, Lindsey Calla, who was raised in New Jersey and visited Hydra repeatedly earlier than transferring there full-time in 2023. I had admired two of her pictures on the gallery, which seemed like summary work however had been really pictures of Hydra’s wild coast. Calla supplied to point out me the place they had been taken.

We boarded a vessel hardly larger than a fishing boat that took us 15 minutes west to the village of Vlichos, then adopted a coastal path and scrambled down a cliffside to a pebbly cove. I out of the blue acknowledged the colours of earth and sea and the froth of the waves from her artworks. “That is the essence of Hydra,” Calla advised me. “The traditional, blood-red cliffs; the wine-dark sea of Homer; the froth of the crashing surf.”

Afterward, we clambered again up the cliff to Tassia’s Tavern, on the 4 Seasons Hydra—which, in charming Greek vogue, is a small beachfront inn solely unrelated to the worldwide luxurious chain—and had a lunch of grilled sardines, feta salad, and ice-cold retsina, white wine with a touch of pine taste. I wish to suppose that the island hedonists of the previous, Henry Miller and Charmian Clift—to not point out the commemorated bard of Hydra, Leonard Cohen—would have accepted. 

A model of this story first appeared within the June 2025 challenge of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “Muse of the Mediterranean.”