Athens, Greece

Shila, Athens

Price per night from$429.19

Price information

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

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR407.40), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Shila, Athens Photos

Style

Athenian arthouse

Setting

Colonnaded Kolonaki

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Shila, Athens is a Twenties townhouse turned temple to design, art and hospitality in cultured Kolonaki. Each of the six suites is different, with the common theme an obsession with originality, whether that’s floating beds, black bathrooms with swings in the shower or artfully undone plasterwork. The output of Greek artists and artisans is showcased on rotation (even in edible form, judging by its breakfast), DJs and sushi chefs regularly frequent the rooftop, and staff see to every whim, all under the watchful eye of Shila herself, who ensures everything is always aesthetically pleasing.

Smith Extra

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A bottle of wine or a set of Shila postcards

Facilities

Photos Shila, Athens facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Six suites.

Check–Out

11am. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

More details

Rates usually include breakfast.

Also

The team is constantly on the lookout for new artists to shout from its rooftop garden about, with regular exhibitions on show in the lounge, in addition to the pieces to be found in every suite – and most of it is for sale (handy for anyone in need of a less tacky than usual souvenir).

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout, rooftop, library lounge. In rooms: air-conditioning, Bose sound system, minibar and bespoke bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Each of the six suites has its artistic highlights, but we especially love the Garden Retreat for its silent outside space, suspended bed that needs steps to be reached gracefully and the votive cabinet paying tribute to portraits of glamorous Greek ladies. La Boheme is nice and roomy, with two bathrooms (including one painted red), dramatic soft furnishings (velvet, brocade and curtains around the bed) and purposefully unfinished plasterwork.

Spa

Packing tips

Your most stylish threads: this is a backdrop so ethereally artistic, Dior has used it for fashion shoots.

Also

The hotel reception is manned between 7.30am and 11pm.

Children

Generally the hotel is over-12s only, however, younger guests may be accepted on a case by case basis, please contact our travel team to enquire. There are two-bedroom suites that are ideal for families, and cots are available upon request.

Food and Drink

Photos Shila, Athens food and drink

Top Table

Join the fun at the communal bench up on the roof, or secure a siesta-friendly white sofa.

Dress Code

Greek gods (and Indian deities).

Hotel restaurant

There’s no restaurant at the hotel but breakfast is delivered to your room each morning, starring: croissants and sourdough from a local bakery, yoghurt with granola and chia seeds, vanilla butter from Normandy and heather honey from the island of Kimolos, along with fresh fruit, cold-press organic orange juice and your preferred hot beverage. Kolonaki has lots of restaurants within walking distance, and the hotel can arrange takeout from a handful of them, including Greek pies, salads, pizzas and meaty sushi from Birdman.

Hotel bar

Drinks, including classic cocktails, cooling iced coffees and virtuous smoothies, are served in the rooftop garden.

Last orders

Breakfast arrives at your suite at whatever time you requested the night before.

Room service

Staff can arrange deliveries from their favourite local restaurants at various times, every day except Sunday. Just text the front desk and wait half an hour.

Location

Photos Shila, Athens location
Address
Shila, Athens
Mantzarou 10 Kolonaki
Athens
10672
Greece

The Kolonaki casa is in one of Athens’ most upscale neighbourhoods, named (fittingly for Greece) after a column.

Planes

It’s a 45-minute drive to Athens International. The hotel can arrange transfers on request.

Trains

Larissa station, the city’s main rail hub, is 20 minutes away by car.

Automobiles

There are lots of metro and bus stops nearby for getting around, and the hotel is on a quiet pedestrianised street – if you have come by car, stow it away on Solonos Street.

Other

Piraeus is the city’s major port and gateway to Greece’s several thousand islands. For those docking here from an Aegean outpost, the hotel is 20 minutes away by car.

Worth getting out of bed for

The hotel’s ’hood is Kolonaki, to which Athenians flock for the city’s finest art, fashion, food and nightlife. Cultural cradles nearby include Benaki, the Goulandris Foundation, the National Gallery and the Museum of Cycladic Art. There are smaller-scale galleries in Kolonaki, too, such as a Gagosian outpost, Kalfayan and Allouche Benias. For something altogether less urban, Mount Lycabettus is there for the hiking (and views out across the city). Anyone with a hearty interest in Ancient Greece (and a strong word-per-minute rate) will enjoy a bookish afternoon at the Gennadius Library, home to no fewer than 145,000 texts and manuscripts. Don’t miss a trip to nearby neighbourhood Exarcheia to admire its architecture, graffiti and Sunday-morning farmers’ market on Kallidromiou Street.

Local restaurants

It may feel as though you’re in someone’s backyard (in a good way), but Fita (+30 21 1414 8624) has some of the best seafood in the city. For Greek sharing plates with a Japanese twist, try Nolan, where fusion street food gets fancy; and for more edible Eastern imports, head to Birdman, an izakaya with some serious meat on offer (wagyu nigiri, for a start). The modestly named Annie Fine Cooking is a classic neighbourhood hangout, creatively preparing fresh produce with even fresher flavours. If you’re in Exarcheia, Ama Lachei, in the garden of an old primary school, is the prandial pitstop of choice.

Local cafés

Helpfully named after the square it’s on, Dexameni (+30 21 0722 4609) is an open-air café that practically begs you to stop and people-watch over some meze. Cafe Avissinia is ideal for a coffee or lunch after shopping for antiques in its surrounding streets.

Local bars

If you prefer your beer and raki to come with a side of some ancient ruins, head to Dioskouroi (+30 21 0325 3333) after a trip around the Ancient Agora of Athens.

Reviews

Photos Shila, Athens reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this townhouse hotel in Athens and unpacked their new artworks and antiques, a full account of their boutique city break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Shila in Kolonaki…

It may have once been a lawyers’ office, but that’s where free-spirit Shila’s corporate life ends, transforming instead into a bohemian bolthole for Athenians in the know. Worshipping Shilas of the Indian-deity variety (not to be confused with the colloquial nickname for Australian women), this unassuming 1920s townhouse, on a sleepy pedestrianised street in Kolonaki, may as well be a speakeasy – as the pleasantly surprised people who’re whisked up to the rooftop for events will attest. 

Almost everything in sight is Greek, apart from some wallpaper from London that sneaked its way in. If you like what you see, you’re in luck: most of the artworks are for sale and the staff will even ship them home for you – extending to classical ceramics, several of which are on display throughout the residence.

This hôtel particulier wants you, its esteemed guest, to feel at home, whether that’s with a tinkle on the piano in the mosaic-floored library lounge, a snooze (or shower) on the roof or a flick through the old editions that were lovingly sourced from antique bookstores. There’s a word in Greek for its people’s ‘love of the foreign’: philoxenia – and the art of hospitality is alive and well at Shila.

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Price per night from $427.61

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