On the quieter side of Mykonos, the new Four Seasons Hotel pairs Cycladic architecture by Nicos Valsamakis with gardens by landscape architect Helli Pangalou. The quieter story is in the landscape, where a designer who already understood this architect turned an ancient idea about healing into a place you feel before you think.
"We always begin by tracing the Topos, respecting what we find on the land, enriching the existing ecosystems, and revealing the therapeutic properties of nature."
On the quieter southeastern side of Mykonos, at Kalo Livadi Bay, late-afternoon sunlight settles along the whitewashed walls, and the Aegean holds its blue beyond the island’s busier beaches. This is where the new Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos sits, beachfront and cliffside, the sea a few steps from the door.
The architecture is rooted in the traditional Mykonian village. It is Cycladic in the classic sense, with stark white walls marked by blue accents long associated with the region and a cluster of low forms gathered above the bay. Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos was designed by Nicos Valsamakis, a leading figure in modern Greek architecture. The choice signals the ambition behind the project. Valsamakis is known for the Amalia hotels and for a body of work that stands among the landmarks of the country’s postwar history. Here, that Cycladic form is interpreted through a distinctly modern mind.
Inside, the interior design for the guest rooms and suites, the spa, the public areas, and the kids club was led by Wimberly Interiors.
Beyond the building, the stone walkways, flowering gardens, and quiet courtyards were the work of landscape architect Helli Pangalou.
Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos
There is an interesting story inside the Four Seasons Mykonos commission, one that has likely not reached any press release yet. Pangalou had worked with the architecture of Nicos Valsamakis before. Between roughly 2008 and 2011, her studio shaped the landscape of a Valsamakis estate at Porto Heli, on the Peloponnese. Later, in 2018, she worked on a rugged, windswept hill project on the island of Antiparos. This means the gardens at Four Seasons Mykonos were imagined by a designer who already understood how Valsamakis thinks. Pangalou is the founding partner of H. Pangalou Landscape Architects & Associates (HPLAA), an Athens practice known well beyond Greece. Her work includes the park around the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, the green space that completes Renzo Piano’s building for the Greek National Library and the National Opera. She is also working with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on the landscape of major hospital projects in Greece under the Stavros Niarchos Global Health Initiative, drawing on her academic research into the ancient healing sanctuary at Epidaurus. That site, the Asklepieion,was dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine, and its design treated the surrounding landscape as part of the cure. Pangalou studies how that worked. At Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos, she brings the same thinking into a hospitality setting.
Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos
“We always begin by tracing the Topos, respecting what we find on the land, enriching the existing ecosystems, and revealing the therapeutic properties of nature.”
This is where the wellness experience begins. The intention lives in the landscape itself, and the body can probably feel it on arrival. The salt comes first, carried up from the water and mixed with the Mediterranean herbs along the paths. Then comes the sea, framed between the white walls, a single hard line of blue. The eyes and body take it all in and begin to respond. As a result, the person starts to relax naturally.
Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos
A good landscape can settle someone physically and mentally. That is the thing Pangalou builds for, and it points to something the modern wellness industry keeps circling back to. For the ancient Greeks, healing was treated as a whole, the body and its surroundings cared for together.
Besides this informal wellness, the hotel also offers the formal wellness facilities you would expect from a property at this level: a sauna, a steam room, a spa boutique, a fitness studio, a yoga pavilion, and two infinity pools.
The rest, as ever, is best experienced in person. Reservations at the Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos are open now, with the first guests arriving this summer.
The Essentials
Four Seasons Hotel Mykonos is the brand’s first hotel on a Greek island and its second property in Greece after Four Seasons Astir Palace Hotel Athens. It sits on the southeastern coast of Mykonos, along the coastline of Kalo Livadi Bay, a 20-minute drive from both the airport and the main town of Chora. The property spans 6 hectares, or 15 acres, and includes 94 rooms, suites, and villas arranged as a low-rise Cycladic village above the bay, with private beach access. The architecture is by Nicos Valsamakis, a leading figure in modern Greek architecture known for the Amalia hotels. The landscape is by Helli Pangalou, founding partner of H. Pangalou Landscape Architects & Associates in Athens. Interiors for the guest rooms, suites, spa, public areas, and kids club are led by Wimberly Interiors. The opening general manager is Ryan Grande, who has been with Four Seasons since 2010 and has worked at properties in Jackson Hole, Seattle, Vancouver, and Costa Rica. The hotel opens in 2026.
