Autumn in Koukouli. The beech forest turns copper from the top of the mountain down, and we light the first fire.
Painted for this page in autumn. The picture changes with the season, and so does the house.
Οξιά, the beech
Nine rooms in a merchant’s house of 1872, on the lower edge of Koukouli in the Zagori. Pies for breakfast, a fire from October, and the Vikos gorge a morning’s walk from the gate.
Katerina drew office buildings in Athens until she saw this house with a fig tree growing out of its first floor. Petros cooked in Thessaloniki until she asked him what he thought of it. We opened in 2019, with nine rooms, no televisions and a room for drying boots.
What we are good at is slow days: a long breakfast, a walk that takes the whole morning, an afternoon on the bench in the bay window, dinner at one table. If you want to see six villages in a day, we will help, but we will also try to talk you out of it.
The house, and how we restored itEvery room was a different part of a merchant’s life: the storeroom, the loom, the winter room around the fire, the painted room where he received his buyers. They still feel like it. The lit ones are free tonight.
The register from the hall table, as it stands this morning. Choose a free night and we will hold it while we write to you.
This weekend, Friday and Saturday together: The Walnut Room.
Free, choose it to ask for that night Taken
The top-floor room built for summer, with the wooden bay window, the sachnisi, and a bench the width of the room.
The room the family lived in through the snow: the big fireplace, and walnut cupboards carved in 1874.
The old storeroom under a stone barrel vault, cool in summer, with its own door to the garden.
Petros cooks from his grandmother’s notebook: one green pie, one cheese, and one that changes with the day of the week. Then sheep’s yoghurt from Kipi, thyme honey, eggs from the neighbour’s hens and mountain tea he picks behind the church.
Today’s pie from the notebook
Pumpkin pie κολοκυθόπιτα
Grated pumpkin, raisins and walnuts, not too sweet.
Katerina has walked every path in the valley with a notebook. These are the ones she sends people on, from an afternoon in the beech wood to the whole day up to the dragon lake.
Spring ΆνοιξηThe snow goes back up Tymfi a little more each week, and the rivers are loud.
Summer ΚαλοκαίριWalking at dawn, swimming in the Voidomatis, dinner in the courtyard under the walnut.Autumn ΦθινόπωροNowThe beech forest turns copper from the top of the mountain down, and we light the first fire.
Winter ΧειμώναςSnow on the slates, the house full of woodsmoke, and nobody on the paths but you.
Our dog was found on the Vikos path. She has been showing guests the way ever since.
The most popular room in the house has no bed in it.
How a roof of four thousand stones was taken apart and put back, one at a time.
