History of Villa Electra
Sitting today οn the sun deck of Villa Electra with its unobstructed views of the Aegean Sea, little could one imagine what this same house looked like when it first came into my family in the 70s. The view we’re enjoying today was then enjoyed solely by a tall prickly pear tree that was growing right in the center of the house, its roots breaking up the remains of the stone floor, its top peering out the roofless house.
Most people would have not looked twice to its direction but when my father Admiral Ioannis Lampiris saw these ruins being washed over by the waves he paused and envisioned this magnificent house, restored to its old aristocratic glory, a villa that would house his growing family and friends in the summer months, and with this dream he decided to buy it as a gift to me, his first-born daughter.
A dream comes true
Soon after, the site started buzzing with activity, with dozens of local craftspeople working on the site to realise my father’s vision, led enthusiastically by my mother, Evridiki, an architect by trade. While the stones of the walls were individually cut and carved, my father travelled to Turkey in search of rare cedar woods that furnish the towering windows and doors even now, withstanding the constant toll of the sea and salt. The finishing touches, like the styling of the indoor staircase, were carefully supervised by my mother and thousands of working hours and hundreds of boat rides later, what used to be little more than a pile of stones had been transformed into a grand villa, one that my parents could enjoy proudly and return to, every summer, with their now three daughters!
What an absolute joy and privilege it was to have a place like Villa Electra to escape to as soon as school was over in the summer. The doors of the large house were always open for friends, the laughter was constant, the memories countless. As my sisters and I went into adulthood in the 90s, with summer holidays now shorter, the high maintenance costs of the house called for it to be rented out to guests, mostly British visitors who came to love the house almost as much as we did, returning year after year to it and calling it ‘home’.
Had it not been for the pandemic of 2020, maybe things would have continued the way they were. However, that year brought a real shift in my own life, too. For the first time, I had the chance to live at Villa Electra throughout the winter and spring while working remotely, with my beloved dogs Alfie and then Niovi. This experience, like that moment when my father decades ago had stood at a house that he wished to transform, was a powerful one. It allowed me to reacquaint myself with the house, caring for it with the love that it deserves, renovating and modernizing it with the principles of sustainability and preparing it for yet another era in its glorious life.
