The TownHouse Hotel Mykonos

The square outside The TownHouse is named after Manto Mavrogenous, by the hotel's account the only woman ever honoured with the title of General-in-Chief. The house keeps up its end. It was an aristocratic manor in the eighteenth century and home to the first mayor of Mykonos. The architect Nader Gebran spent some three years restoring it around the archaeological restrictions, and it opened in 2020 with twenty rooms. Outside, a dark red door stands under an iron fanlight, with bougainvillea climbing the whitewash. Inside, the beams are painted white and worn back to grey, over plain white beds and a basin on a weathered wooden console. The roof holds the 54 Cocktail & Sunset Lounge, round grey sofas among brass lanterns, looking over the flat white roofs of the town to a row of windmills and the sea.

Recommended for adults - the minimum age is 18 - who want to sleep in the middle of Mykonos Town and still reach the beach clubs. Cars are kept out of the old town in season, so a porter meets guests at its entrance, 250 metres off, and walks the bags in through lanes laid out, the hotel says, to defeat pirates. The same lanes take five minutes to Little Venice and ten to the windmills at Kato Mili. The beach clubs are ten to fifteen minutes' drive, or the concierge will send a speedboat to Scorpios, or a yacht out to Delos with freshly caught fish barbecued on board. There is no pool and no restaurant, and in the middle of town neither is much missed. The breakfast menu has a section of morning cocktails, for anyone who cannot wait for the roof.