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

Touring to Hydra is generally a calming, nearly 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 visitors sound is the clip-clop of donkey hooves and essentially the most disturbing 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 evening at Artwork Basel Miami Seaside.

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 ebook 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 trendy 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 have 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 good” 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 have been whisked by way of a five-minute boat experience to Mandraki Bay, the place the gallery Wilhelmina’s has operated in a splendid Nineteenth-century mansion since 2023. Because the solar dipped beneath 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 have been ladies. Wine flowed. Tables groaned with treats: plates of seafood, bowls of Greek salad, tubs of plump olives. Extra friends 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 area. On the time it was coated in cobwebs and filled with odds and ends, extra like a storage room. I mentioned to the proprietor, ‘This may make a phenomenal 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 friends,” she mused. “It may have been 150? Perhaps 250?” Von Blumenthal piped in: “It’s a great drawback 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 turned a hangout for bohemians reminiscent of Miller and the Greek poet George Seferis. It was rediscovered after World Conflict II by the likes of Lawrence Durrell and two Australian writers, George Johnston and Charmian Clift, who turned the anchors of a brand new expat neighborhood. In 1960, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen purchased a home on the island, the place he would reside 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 preferred artists’ hangout, shows an array of black-and-white pictures from that point. In current many years, Hydra has maintained its magical aura, largely because of the absence of visitors—everybody will get round by foot, boat, or donkey—and limits on new building. 

Once I first visited the island just a few 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 hardly ever 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 straight into the waves. Later, again in New York, it was exhausting to consider visiting Greek buddies once they advised me that sleepy Hydra was truly a sizzling spot for modern artwork. And so final summer season 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 Seaside Resort, just a few steps from the island’s solely sandy seaside. Though it affords state-of-the-art luxurious, together with personal plunge swimming pools, its two-century-old buildings are part of quirky Greek folklore: they have 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 positioned in Miaoulis’s former mansion.

Because of the hawklike oversight of historic edifices by Hydriot authorities, renovation of the lodge was painstaking. The supervisor, Arthur Fitzwilliam, who started coming to Hydra when he was a teen within the Sixties, defined that after getting the lease in 2016, he spent 18 months acquiring permits to make sure that authentic particulars have 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 suitable lab and to get them to interrupt down its six components!”

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

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

By the following afternoon, the artwork crowd had decamped and Hydra returned to its serene summer season tempo, with different low-key artwork websites revealing themselves like sculptural rocks at low tide. For the remainder of the week, utilizing the Mandraki Seaside Resort as a base, I began every day in time-honored Hydriot model—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 building on Hydra, it was maybe unsurprising that the string of artwork areas I visited have been, like my lodge, all in charmingly renovated historic buildings. At nightfall at some point, I climbed the port’s steep, cobblestoned lanes and clambered beneath stone arches to go to the Outdated Carpet Manufacturing facility, a recording studio that doubles as a gallery in an imposing mansion with image home windows and panoramic views. The exhibition, “The Warp of Time,” featured putting modern 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 beneath us, weavings from 2024 above,” mused proprietor Stephan Colloredo-Mansfeld, who runs the area 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 kind of Greek brandy.

The subsequent night, I strolled one other winding lane to Hydrogoios Arts & Tradition, a part-time exhibition area that occupies a 240-year-old mansion. Von Blumenthal and Karayannopoulou have 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 wood boat hull for a ceiling, and stone arches have been embedded within the entrance. The outside partitions have been a fortress-like thickness; they’d been constructed to guard the inhabitants from pirates. However they have 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 could be very salty—I don’t even know its identify in Greek!”

There have been joyful accidents. Whereas visiting the waterfront Historic Archives Museum of Hydra, I stumbled into the Hydra Ebook Membership. This bookstore and neighborhood 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 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 a captivating 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 photos of island donkeys.)

Everybody on the artwork areas was so amiable and open that almost all nights I’d one way or the other discover myself invited to sundown cocktails at Hydronetta or the Windmill Bar, the place tables and chairs have 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 gaggle dinner could be held on the eatery known as “the hen woman,” 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 one way or the other get misplaced,” German-born artwork curator Katharina Bosch, who spends her summers on Hydra, warned me. “You take a look at your watch and understand it’s 3 a.m.”

And each evening, 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 commonly 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 commonly earlier than shifting there full-time in 2023. I had admired two of her photos on the gallery, which appeared like summary work however have been truly images of Hydra’s wild coast. Calla provided to point out me the place they have been taken.

We boarded a vessel hardly greater 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 all of the sudden 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 style, is a small beachfront inn completely 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 prefer to assume 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 authorized. 

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