Updated Daily from the Island of Hydra Greece

For many years we have fielded enquiries "if the beautiful yellow house on the hill is for sale?"  It looked abandoned and well, it never hurts to ask. What they were looking at in fact, was one of the slowest restoration jobs in history. It took longer than the Sistine Chapel. Since the Mansion passed into the hands of the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece upon the death of Lazaros Koundouriotis' grandson Pantelis (1900-78), the yellow house on the hill has been slowly slowly coming alive again. Last Sunday it opened to the public who poured through its doors eager to see how the rich once lived.
Built at the end of the eighteenth century, its three floors are now divided into exhibition areas. The main floors house costumes, relics and a suite of handsome rooms furnished with antiques faithful to nineteenth century Hydriot style. On the lower level an art gallery exhibits a collection of paintings by Constantinos Byzantios.

The Koundouriotis Mansion is what every Hydra home aspires to. Architecturally it is of great historical importance with its original ceilings and floors intact, a pattern-book of colours,  textures and proportions for anyone who is restoring a period house or building a new one in Hydra. Those who can afford to, still install the traditional latticework wooden ceilings and chequerboard marble terraces that lend elegance to the yellow Mansion.
The appearance of modern Greece might improve considerably if students of Architecture visited the Mansion and analysed what it takes to add symmetry and grace to the villas of today.

Photography : Raichel Le Goff (all rights reserved)