Olea All Suite Hotel

Olea was drawn round a single pool of 4,000 square metres, and the suites stand along its edges. In the Swim Up categories, the step off the terrace is into the water. The pool runs in curving arms past low white blocks and round a planted island of olive trees, which were on this hillside above Tsilivi for centuries before the hotel was and now have an island to themselves. BLOCK722, the Athens practice that designed it, worked in oak and rattan, and put thatch over the restaurant terrace, where slatted screens cut up the light and the sea shows between the posts. In the suites the walls are plastered the colour of wet clay, a cushioned daybed is built in along one wall, and the glass opens the full width onto a wooden terrace and, in the sea-view suites, the Ionian.

Recommended for couples who would like the pool to do most of the work: nobody under twelve is taken, and there is no kids' club. For water nobody else is in, book a Private Pool Suite, and an Executive one for the sea or the sunset. Flow Dine & Wine, where Michalis Nourloglou cooks, looks out from the top of the hill. The Royal Spa keeps a hammam, and there is a yoga pavilion for anyone with the discipline to leave the water. Tsilivi's sandy beach is 1.5 km down the hill, a drive the hotel arranges. For one evening off the hill, it lays on a private sunset cruise round the island by yacht: the only outing here with more water in it than the pool.