The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Rent a literary lair with a view – and a muse
Travel writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor found inspiration in this Peloponnese hideaway – and so might you, says Harry Mount
The great travel writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) knew Greece perhaps better than any Englishman of the 20th century. As a young man, before the Second World War, he roamed across Greece after his epic trudge from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul – the walk that inspired his magnificent trilogy, A Time of Gifts, Between the Woods and the Water, and The Broken Road. During the war, in Crete, he pulled off a Boy’s Own feat of derring-do in 1944, kidnapping the German commander, major general Heinrich Kreipe.
Then, in 1958, he wrote Mani, his timeless guide to the remote, bleakly enchanting finger of land that pokes south of the Peloponnese. And it was here, in the Mani, just outside the little town of Kardamyli, that Leigh Fermor came in 1962. He wrote to his future wife, Joan, “There is not a house in sight. Nothing but rocks, trees, mountains and sea. It’s called Kalamitsi.”
It was here, too, in 1964, that the Leigh Fermors built the loveliest villa I have seen in the Mediterranean. And now you can stay there. The couple bequeathed the house to the Benaki Museum, a fine institution in Athens, with the intention that it should be used by writers and researchers and for educational purposes. This has come to pass but you can also rent it for holidays. The villa opened last year to guests but stays were curtailed by the pandemic. Now it is open properly.
Yes, at €6,000 per night it is very expensive, but you get the whole place – the Main House, the Traditional House and the smaller Guest House – for up to 10 people, along with use of a private beach and a shared pool. Believe me, it is worth it.
If you are a PLF nut, this is like Graceland for an Elvis fan or Haworth Parsonage for Brontë groupies. Everywhere, there are memories of him – genuine, not ersatz. In one guest room, you will find his travel trunk, engraved with the words “Patrick Leigh Fermor DSO OBE – Travellers Club, Pall Mall, London.” In all the rooms, there are his own books – from Homer to works by his great friend, Debo, the Duchess of Devonshire. Sadly, many of them are behind wire to protect them from light-fingered types. But lots of his books are on open access, including his well-thumbed copy of Who’s Who, inscribed with his signature in Greek.
The bedrooms are immaculate, with the original four in the main house converted into three suites of three rooms, each with its own bathroom and study space. In the library are copies of pictures by his artist friends John Craxton (represented by sweet paintings of a cat and a leaping goat) and Ghika (1906-1994), Greece’s most famous 20th-century artist. Leigh Fermor spent many happy holidays with Craxton and Ghika at Ghika’s home (sadly now derelict after a fire) on the island of Hydra.
As you move from room to room, you spot the Leigh Fermors’ meticulous eye for detail and history, and the result of decades of travel across Europe. The rooms are connected by an arched stone colonnade, inspired by monks’ cells in Greek monasteries.
The whole villa is built out of goldflecked limestone from Mount Taygetus, the mountain range that looms behind the house – and where the ancient Spartans exposed their weaker children. Not far over the other side of the mountains lie Sparta and Mycenae (home to Helen of Troy, Menelaus and Agamemnon). Day trips take you to the real highlights of the Peloponnese: Pylos, the unknown, five-star site of Messene, and a longer trip to Olympia.
The entrance door to the library – John Betjeman called it “one of the rooms of the world” – is topped by a star-shaped stone from Paros, the island which produced the best sparkling marble in ancient Greece. The fireplaces have pointed Persian arches, inspired by Leigh Fermor’s eastern journeys.
To one side of the library there is a “hayati”, a Byzantine-Ottoman-style room which catches the winter sun and overlooks the sea through 200 panes of glass. Dominating the library is an enormous, circular, marble table based on a tondo in the chancel of St Anastasia Church in Verona, Italy.
Most breathtaking of all, however, is the property’s situation. The Leigh Fermors meticulously designed their villa on classical lines, borrowing from Palladio and Vitruvius. And they positioned it to capture superb views of the sea. The house is on a cliff, with a staircase down to its own beach, overlooking the sea and the little, Africa-shaped island of Merope – around which Paddy would swim every day in his 90s. I just about managed it, at the age of 50.
A vast terrace spreads between the house and the cliff edge, decorated with pebble mosaics, a Seljuk fountain and two sunken spots from which to watch the sea turn wine-dark, as Homer described it, at night. Soaring cypresses frame the setting sun.
You can look south along the Mani peninsula, unchanged since Leigh Fermor described it in 1958. In a day trip, you can get right down to Cape Matapan, the southernmost point of the Mani. You will pass clusters of 19th-century defensive towers. Most atmospheric of all is the village of Vatheia, half of its towers deserted, half of them converted to tourist use.
Even before Covid struck, tourists were thin on the ground – and remain so. This is Greece off the beaten track. Drive up the foothills of Mount Taygetus behind Kardamyli and you will find the little church of Agios Nikolaos in Exochori. This is where the ashes of travel writer Bruce Chatwin, a close friend of Leigh Fermor’s, were scattered after his death from Aids in 1989, aged just 48. Here is Greece profonde – and Greece deserted. When I visited Exochori, I didn’t see a single soul, apart from a rather aggressive horse.
The Mani has always been a place
Speaking volumes: the Leigh Fermors’ house is filled with the writer’s books and possessions, including his travel trunk apart from metropolitan Greece, apart from the “polis” – ancient Greek for city (from which we get the word “politics”). But it has also always had a disproportionately influential place in Greek history. Kardamyli is mentioned in The Iliad as one of the cities Agamemnon offers to Achilles, when Achilles is enraged at Agamemnon stealing his girlfriend, Briseis. The first line of The Iliad is about this anger: “Menin aeide thea Peleiadeo Achilleos oulomenin” – “Sing, goddess, about the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus.”
For all the Mani’s ancient roots, the Leigh Fermor villa has been updated with all mod cons. When I first visited in 2013, two years after PLF’s death, the house was just as he left it, with no air conditioning. Air con and Wi-Fi have all been installed, with the wires carefully concealed, so that I can see no palpable change between the house then and now – except that it no longer passes the Mitford test, as affectionately quoted by PLF: “All nice rooms are a bit shabby.”
(Bloomsbury, £9.99). Overseas travel is currently subject to restrictions. See page 5