Tinos, Greece

Pnoēs Tinos

Price per night from$324.23

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR300.88), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Sparkling Cyclades sugarcubes

Setting

Heavenly Hellenic haven

To describe Pnoēs Tinos as a feast for the senses is no mere cliché. The warm Greek sun dapples bared shoulders through the shade of fruit trees on the terraces; balmy meltemi breezes carry the scents of Mediterranean herbs – lavender, marjoram, sage, thyme – across the shimmering surface of your private pool and into your pristine white villa, where stone walls and lime-washed interiors provide a cool haven, hammam-style bathrooms feature oversized bath tubs and locally handmade soaps, and epic Aegean views come as standard. But a breakfast of Greek yoghurt drowned in Tinian thyme honey may be all that’s required to turn you into a true believer on this godly Greek isle.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A bottle of local wine and a box of handmade soaps

Facilities

Photos Pnoēs Tinos facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Three large private villas, each with two bedrooms and a pool.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £290.20 (€340), including tax at 13 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional government tax of €1.50 per room per night on check-out.

More details

Rates include a lavish daily breakfast of locally sourced produce. Expect freshly baked breads and pastries, Greek yoghurt, sweet Tinian honey, homemade jams , as well as fruits and herbal tea infusions from the property’s own garden.

Also

Celebrated Athens architectural design studio Aristides Dallas Architects was a nominee in the 2022 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

Hotel closed

The villas are closed for the winter season, between November and March.

At the hotel

Free WiFi and beach towels. In villas: Private pool, Nespresso coffee machine with pods, flatscreen TVs in both bedrooms, free bottle of wine, kitchenette with cooking hobs, mini-fridge and kettle, lounge area with fireplace, bathroom with built-in bath tub, rainfall shower, dual sinks and organic handmade toiletries from local soapmaker Ena Karo.

Our favourite rooms

Choosing a favourite among the three sugar-white villas that make up the Pnoēs Tinos complex is a task of near-Sisyphean difficulty. All have cool, Cycladic interiors adorned with handcrafted furniture, local paintings and sculptures, and cocoon-like hammam-influenced bathrooms. Step out onto the terrace and straight into your private pool for Aegean views that would make a Greek god or goddess weep.

Poolside

All three villas come with their own private pools.

Spa

Pnoēs Tinos partners with a local wellness centre and treatments can be arranged at your villa. Day passes for a local gym can be organised on request.

Packing tips

Tiny Tinos is a great place to live out your castaway fantasies. Sure, a volleyball with a crudely painted face might be a bit of a squeeze to fit into your hand luggage, but classic desert-island adventures like Robinson Crusoe and Life of Pi take up way less room and are great for long hot afternoons spent shipwrecked on warm volcanic sands.

Also

The nearest beach (Agios Fokas) is a five-minute walk from the property. There are bars and tavernas on this long stretch, where you’ll find a mix of golden and black volcanic sands, as well as some pebbly sections.

Children

Villas include a second bedroom with twin beds, ideal for Little Smiths. Kids aged eight and upwards are welcome, though Pnoēs Tinos is the kind of place where you might want to consider leaving them back home with the grandparents for a few days.

Sustainability efforts

Sustainability is in the DNA at Pnoēs Tinos, where bone-white Cycladic-style dwellings are built from locally sourced stone and interiors are rendered with natural lime and furnished by local craftspeople. The walnut cabinets, the intricate ironwork, the Greek marble, the handmade toiletries by soapmaker Ena Karo? All proudly Tinian. Fruit trees line the terraces and there are gardens where fragrant Mediterranean herbs and flowers for tea infusions blossom. Guests are free to help themselves to the natural bounty and gardeners are on hand to provide tips on the best tea varieties. Worm hotels in the grounds are fed with composted paper and leftovers, nourishing the soil in the organic vegetable patch and creating a biodiverse garden where native wildlife can flourish. Not least the Tinian bees, whose mellow thyme honey is the star attraction at lavish breakfasts that fairly heave with local produce, including jams, breads, pastries, fruits and yoghurt.

Food and Drink

Photos Pnoēs Tinos food and drink

Hotel restaurant

 There’s no restaurant on site, but staff have a ready list of recommended places to dine locally. A chef is expected to join the Pnoēs Tinos team imminently, for in-villa dining and terrace barbecues.

Location

Photos Pnoēs Tinos location
Address
Pnoēs Tinos
Lagkades Agios Fokas
Tinos
842 00
Greece

Cast away at the southern tip of Cyclades siren Tinos, the villas at Pnoēs Tinos lie amid fragrant herb and flower gardens overlooking the Aegean, a short hop from Tinos town and popular Agios Fokas beach.

Planes

Adding to that blissful feeling of having discovered somewhere truly remote, the closest airports to Tinos are on neighbouring Mykonos or in Athens. Regular ferries connect both to the island.

Trains

Automobiles

A car is highly recommended for exploring hillside villages chock-full of tumbledown whitewashed houses, traditional Greek tavernas, picturesque windmills and literally hundreds of tiny, ornate chapels, churches and dovecotes. There are several rental companies on the island and free parking at Pnoēs Tinos where, in-keeping with the sustainability vibe, you’ll find several charging points for electric vehicles.

Other

Want to arrive on the island by air in spite of the lack of airport? It’s your lucky day! A helipad 500 metres from Pnoēs Tinos means you can finally make your Bond villain fantasies a reality, though admittedly Blofeld probably didn’t have to call the hotel in advance to arrange his.

Worth getting out of bed for

In the event that you weary of scuba-diving the shipwreck off Agios Fokas beach, or that gazing dreamily across the Aegean from your own private pool suddenly loses its allure (spoiler alert: it won’t), fear not: there’s plenty more to see and do in them there hills. 

Hop in the car and get lost among the island’s dozens of tiny traditional villages – Tripotamos, Ktikado, Pyrgos, Ysternia, Triantaros-Berdemiaros; they fairly trip off the tongue. The reasons Tinos has been dubbed ‘the handmade island’ will become abundantly clear before you travel far. Legend has it that ancient Greek sculptor Phidias taught his craft here, and that heritage is writ large in each and every village. You’ll see it in delicately hewn stone doorways, on sycamore-lined village squares where elderly locals congregate around magnificent marble fountains that wouldn’t look out of place in a museum, and in the hundreds of intricately decorated stone and slate dovecotes that dot the landscape. These plush pigeon palaces are rightly esteemed as some of the most impressive works of art in the Cyclades.

Dig deeper into Tinos’s marble mania at the Museum of Marble Crafts in Pyrgos, where you can admire Neohellenic sculptures galore and even join workshops to learn the craft yourself. Down by the waterfront in Tinos town, the Cultural Foundation of Tinos exhibits a permanent collection of 19th- and 20th-century marble sculptures by legendary local boy Yannoulis Chalepas.

Tinos isn’t short of picturesque chapels and churches either, with around 750 to explore across the island. Chief among these is the Panagia Evangelistria, a Renaissance confection in dazzling whites, creams and eggshell blues that is Greece’s premier shrine to the Virgin Mary. Summer visitors to the island can witness the annual mass procession here on 15 August, when thousands of pilgrims descend on Tinos to pay their respects to the miraculous icon around which the church was built.

And if that doesn’t get you believing in some higher power, the otherworldly landscapes around the village of Volax almost certainly will. Visit at sunset when enormous boulders, here since time immemorial, cast long, eerie shadows across the scarred lunar terrain.

Local restaurants

Tinos is just made for long boozy lunches at hillside tavernas, knocking back plateful after delicious plateful of rabbit stifado, ouzo-steamed clams and goat’s cheese drizzled with Tinian honey. It’s dishes like these that have cemented Tinos’ reputation as one of the top gourmet destinations in the Cyclades. The wines here are no slouches either. Try summery white Malagouzia from the Volacus vineyard in the east of the island, or savour the dark cherry and coffee notes of a Mavrotragano from T-Oinos. Raki, the island’s ‘national’ drink is especially good on Tinos, and available in every bar, café, restaurant and taverna worth its salt.

There are a number of good dining options along the coast road and into Tinos town. Head to Galera, a fish and seafood taverna with alfresco dining right on the waterfront, overlooking the harbour. Or try nearby Marathia for similarly splendid seaside seating and an ever-changing menu that features whatever ingredients are freshest from the sea, market and herb garden that day. We’re talking grilled artichokes with sun-dried tomatoes and aged local gruyère, crispy fried octopus with aromatic beetroot purée, and slow-roasted pork with fennel and honey.

Local cafés

You’ll find some of the best traditional spoon sweets and cobweb-blasting Greek coffee at unassuming rustic roadside cafés dotted around the island. Tinos’s specialty spoon sweet – candied lemon-tree flowers preserved in sugar syrup – should be considered essential eating wherever you see them on a menu. You can worry about the dental bills later.

Cafés close to Pnoēs Tinos that are worth an hour or two of your time include Mikro, a cosy eatery with whitewashed stone interiors near the Panagia Evangelistria church in Tinos. Here, crêpes and pancakes of both sweet and savoury varieties are the order of the day. Hungry diners are advised to sample both.

Argy’s ups the ante somewhat, adding port views, homemade cakes, gelato and – crucially – a vast cellar stocked with wines from both home and abroad.

Local bars

Tinos town is where it’s at for the best cocktail joints in the area. Three Donkeys sets the (ahem) bar, with its intimate upstairs lounge, live DJs and bohemian vibe. There’s a long list of cocktails to choose from and occasionally an even longer queue at the bar, such is the reputation of this Tinos treasure. In summer, the crowds often spill out onto the narrow cobbled street below where, next door, the equally lively Sivilla mops up any overspill.