Athens, Greece

Xenodocheio Milos

Price per night from$405.70

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 (EUR376.49), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Epicurean idyl

Setting

Strikingly central

Gallivanting gourmands will be hard-pressed to resist the siren call of Xenodocheio Milos, an understated yet indisputably luxurious city-centre stay from celebrated Greek fine-dining empire Estiatorio Milos. The hotel, situated in a landmark building opposite Old Parliament House, is a few minutes’ stroll from the city’s chi-chi-est shopping street, the National Gardens and central Syntagma Square. There’s a spa for apres-Acropolis unwinding, and a seafood restaurant where sybaritic Smiths can rub shoulders with Greek glitterati.  

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A 30-minute Elemis massage each

Facilities

Photos Xenodocheio Milos facilities

Need to know

Rooms

43, including nine suites.

Check–Out

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

Prices

Double rooms from £363.13 (€425), including tax at 13 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional government tax of €10.00 per room per night on check-out.

More details

Greek breakfast is an extra €30, and can be served in-room. Expect spotlight-stealing Greek cheeses, preserves and pastries.

Also

Wheelchair accessible rooms are available.

At the hotel

Gym, spa, steam room, 24-hour room service, newspaper delivery, laundry, free WiFi. In rooms: Marble bathroom with oversized rain shower and luxury bath products, bathrobes and slippers, Nespresso coffee machine, air conditioning, smart TV with Netflix, desk with USB ports, free bottled water. Minibars feature Greek snacks and drinks, including Tsipouro and mastiha liqueur.

Our favourite rooms

The beautifully tranquil Milos Terrace Suite comes with its own spacious outdoor terrace, with a stylish seating area and private Jacuzzi. There are gorgeous gasp-garnering rooftop views of the city, the Old Parliament Building, and Lycabettus Hill, the highest peak in Athens. The decor is elegantly simple, with a neutral colour palette, wooden floors, and a dining and seating area. All of the rooms have marble bathrooms with Bulgari products and a modern cream-hued light-wood design.

Spa

The sirenic spa suite uses luxury Elemis products for spirit-soothing massages, facials and treatments. There’s a steam room for post-street-pounding relaxation.

Packing tips

Glamorous glad-rags.

Children

Family rooms are available, as well as interconnecting rooms and suites; babysitting can be arranged by the hotel concierge. Most rooms have dining tables set up for in-room fine dining for families who prefer privacy.

Food and Drink

Photos Xenodocheio Milos food and drink

Top Table

For an intimate dinner, tables upstairs in the bijou mezzanine area give you an aerial view of the action, away from the hubbub of the main restaurant floor. There’s also a private dining area for incognito explorers.

Dress Code

Grown-up glamour.

Hotel restaurant

Chef Costas Spiliadis delivers Poseidon-pleasing seafood at restaurant Estiatorio Milos – the home-grown outpost of his international Greek fine-dining brand. The focus is on simple Mediterranean flavours, quality ingredients and just-caught fish fresh from the Aegean. Guests can sample delicate oysters, whole fish baked in sea salt (crust cracked at the table), and a raw fish bar with the catch of the day served sashimi-style or as a light citrusy ceviche. Popular with Athens’ social set, the bright and airy dining room features a soaring ceiling flanked by a sculptural fishing net (indicating… well, it should be obvious) and a sea-foam colour palette. 

Hotel bar

Milos bar serves up coffees, cocktails and an extensive wine list, set to a soundtrack approved by Greek composer Stavros Xarchakos.

Room service

24-hour room service is available, and in-room dining tables let you replicate the restaurant’s top-drawer dining in private.

Location

Photos Xenodocheio Milos location
Address
Xenodocheio Milos
Kolokotroni 3-5
Athens
10562
Greece

Xenodocheio Milos sits in a near-impossible-to-beat location right in the centre of Athens, on a lacquered square opposite the Old Parliament and steps from Syntagma Square and the National Gardens.

Planes

Athens International Airport is a 35-minute drive away. The hotel can arrange taxi transfers. Alternatively, take the M3 metro line: it’s a 37-minute ride direct from the airport to Syntagma metro station, which is less than five minutes’ walk from the hotel.

Trains

Athens central railway station is a 10-minute taxi ride from the hotel.

Automobiles

Driving may not be your preferred method of transportation in big, traffic-choked Athens, but it’s achievable to take in the storied capital as part of a longer trip. The hotel doesn’t provide parking, but motorheads will find a private car park within a few minutes’ walk. Road trippers can use the metropolis as a jumping-off point for a street safari taking in Delphi with its 4th-century Temple of Apollo, visiting the ancient port city of Thessaloniki, or tracking Hercules and Helen of Troy through the Peloponnese.

Other

Seafaring Smiths may prefer to approach Athens by boat. Charter a yacht to combine a spot of island hopping with your cultural odyssey of the capital, or take an overnight ferry from Rhodes or Crete. For maximum drama, we recommend riding the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express to Venice and crossing to Athens by ferry.

Worth getting out of bed for

Greece’s glittering ancient capital is a many-layered urban moussaka. The Acropolis on its rocky outcrop overlooks glitzy rooftop cocktail bars, souvlaki-scented taverns, and contemporary galleries housed in gracefully crumbling neoclassical mansions. It’s dominated the Athens skyline for 2,500 years and this cluster of historic buildings, which include the Parthenon, is worth the hike. Visit in the morning or late afternoon to beat the heat (and the crowds). Room for more? The marble Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion offers ocean views worthy of the gods from its cliff-top perch. 

It would be a (Greek) tragedy to miss Museum Mile. Spot prehistoric, ancient Greek and Byzantine art at the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, bronze age artefacts at the Museum of Cycladic Art, and religious icons, rare manuscripts and treasures at the Byzantine and Christian Museum

Beach devotees who prefer a side of sun lounging with their culture-spotting might head to Astir Beach on the Athens Riviera. Back in town, you may choose to explore the Monastiraki neighbourhood, home to the ruins of Hadrian’s Library and the Ancient Agora.

For the best vantage point in Athens, take the funicular railway to the top of Mount Lycabettus, the city’s highest peak, for gods’-eye-view panoramic vistas.

Local restaurants

A traditional tavern-slash-deli, and less than ten minutes’ walk from Xenodocheio Milos, Ta Karamanlidika tou Fani is an aromatic pastomageireio where meats, sausages and cheeses hang from around the deli counter like savoury stalactites. The typically Greek menu features classic dishes like meatballs with tomato sauce, eggplant cream and anevato cheese, smoked eel, and spicy sujuk sausage pie baked in the stone oven. 

Greek-Japanese fusion eatery Nolan is headed up by Greek Masterchef judge Sotiris Kontizas and is a five-minute walk from the hotel. Its complex dishes such as soba noodles with tahini, smoked salmon and crispy spring onion, and the panko-crusted cod bao burger are worth savouring.

Also within stumbling distance is GB Roof Garden, the rooftop restaurant on the eighth floor of the Hotel Grande Bretagne. This smart, white-table-linen establishment offers cityscape views that take in Syntagma Square and the Acropolis beyond. Book a sunset sitting to watch the ancient citadel light up on the horizon while you feast on beef tartare with aged cheese and winter truffle, or risotto with lemon, calamari and bottarga. 

Local cafés

Ten minutes from the hotel is TAF (The Art Foundation), a trendy multi-use cultural space in a 19th-century neoclassical building near Monastiraki flea market. The open-air café and bar is set in a central courtyard (covered during the winter). There’s excellent coffee, an art gallery, exhibitions, and a shop supporting local Greek designers. After dark, expect cocktails, DJs spinning experimental sets, and jazz. 

Local bars

A five-minute walk from Xenodocheio Milos, Heteroclito cave & bar à vin has one of the city’s most extensive wine lists, friendly service, Greek cheeses and charcuterie, and charming pavement seating where you can quaff the good stuff in the shadow of Athens Cathedral. Also within a five-minute stroll is low-lit cocktail joint Baba au Rum. Expect tropical tiki-style concoctions and an impressive collection of rums. The most popular cocktail on the menu is the Spicy Baba (Trinidad and Tobago rum with ginger, berries and lime) and the avant garde list might pair Martini Bitter with vermouth, blackberries, chocolate and Cuban tobacco leaves, or match bergamot with tomato and citrus flowers. Ya mas!

Reviews

Photos Xenodocheio Milos reviews
Felicity Cloake

Anonymous review

By Felicity Cloake, Gourmet globetrotter

There are some cities where you want to stay somewhere that feels part of the action – a party-ready place to be seen without the bother of having to brave the traffic, or indeed the weather. Athens – one of the sunniest and most walkable capitals in Europe – is, in my opinion at least, not one of them. The sheer energy of it, with café tables crammed on to every inch of pavement not filled by crowds of history-hungry tourists, may cause the visitor newly arrived from the peace of the islands (me) to crave a still small point of calm to retreat to at the end of the day. Not that I’m not cool, obviously. Just middle-aged and quite tired.

Boutique hideaway Xenodocheio Milos doesn’t immediately seem to fit the bill, given it’s just round the corner from busy Syntagma Square and also houses the Athens outpost of owner Costas Spiliadis’ global chain of high-end seafood restaurants. (Kris Jenner is a big fan of the New York branch, which might tip you off that this is not your average chain restaurant.) In fact, however, the two operations feel quite separate; the hotel is accessed via a discreet lobby next door, a narrow space so understated I find myself feeling just a tiny bit disappointed as we go through the formalities of check-in – though sleek, it doesn’t scream luxury of the kind I’d hoped for after an early start and a high-speed ferry ride.

Thankfully the plush carpets and soft lighting upstairs are more promising…and as soon as I see the room itself I know Milos and I are going to be very happy together. The lofty ceiling, tall windows, and – best of all – snowy expanse of crisp white linen on the bed, uncluttered by fussy throws or cushions, lead me to suspect I could spend a couple of days in here sampling the room service while my partner takes in the sights alone – after all, if they’ve survived for 3,000-odd years, they’ll surely keep for a few more.

Indeed I’m so enamoured by the bathroom (deep blue and clad in the same marble used in the Acropolis apparently – yes, I’m impressed) that I take several pictures as inspiration for future renovations, even though the loo alone is the size of my entire London flat. And then I notice the art, a selection of extremely tasteful male nudes draped across rocks and ruins, and spend a pleasant five minutes further studying them closely in the hope of spotting a stray willy. Clearly, Milos and I are on the same aesthetic wavelength.

As someone who travels a lot for work, I fancy myself as a bit of a connoisseur of hotels and their various eccentricities, so I then go round looking for things to criticise while my partner flicks through the TV channels and makes uninterested noises. This room does not, I’m afraid, offer much in the way of fodder. The shower, which is huge, has a shelf that’s wide enough for the toiletries, and doesn’t look likely to flood. There are plenty of plug points within easy reach of the bed, a decent coffee machine, a full-length mirror and a proper hairdryer in close proximity, and a generous window seat from which to watch Athens go about its merry business from a safe distance. (After spending the next morning at the packed Parthenon, I’m very tempted to sneak back to our room to read my book in peace, instead of moving on to look at Byzantine bracelets at the Benaki Museum; but, because I am trying hard to be a more cultured person, I persevere.) 

The gym, which I peep into but don’t actually use, because we’re here to improve our minds not our bodies, is small but notably well equipped. And, though we don’t brave the restaurant for dinner, because I’m more of a ‘spilling-onto-the-pavement taverna with a jug of retsina wine’ kind of woman (and also I’ve brought entirely the wrong clothes to mingle with Athenian glitterati), we do go in for breakfast – make sure this is included in your room rate, as even a bowl of cornflakes is €14 otherwise, and trust me, you’re going to want the full Greek option. We also pop into the bar, which supplies my only – small – gripe about the hotel. So blissfully cocooned is the accommodation from the real world that one can only access said bar by going outside onto the street and round the corner; when surely the whole point of a session in the hotel bar, we agree as we sink a post-prandial glass of mastiha liqueur, is that you can just roll back to your room afterwards. Especially when that particular room was so very hard to leave in the first place.

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Price per night from $405.70