How a Naousa courtyard works.

The Cycladic house was not designed for the photograph. It was designed for the wind, the heat, and the absence of trees. Almost everything you see — the whitewash, the geometry, the heavy walls, the inward-facing courtyards — solves a microclimate problem.

Take Naousa as a working example. The village faces north toward the harbour, which means it is hit, hard, by the meltemi for nine months of the year. A house with rooms facing outward toward the harbour would be unliveable for weeks at a time. So Cycladic builders did the inverse: rooms face inward, toward a stone courtyard, and the courtyard becomes the actual living room of the house.

Alkistis Exclusive is built on this template. Walk in from the lane and the first thing you cross is the inner courtyard — paved, bordered by the suite doors, shaded in summer by the old fig tree the original house was built around. This is where breakfast happens, where the late-evening glass of wine is set out, where the hot afternoons get sat through.

The whitewash has a job too. White is what reflects the August sun before it can warm the wall behind it. Walls in the Cyclades are often a foot and a half thick — limestone or volcanic stone with a lime plaster — and once warmed, they hold heat all night. The whitewash is annual; villagers used to coat their houses every summer ahead of the heat.

The roof is the third element. Flat, accessible, and double-purposed: in Naousa, roofs traditionally served as drying terraces (figs, tomatoes), as sleeping platforms on hot nights, and as rainwater collection. The cisterns under the courtyards of the old houses still work — Alkistis's was rebuilt during restoration and now waters the garden.

What this gives you, as a guest, is a building that does not need air conditioning to be comfortable in July. We run AC in the suites, but rarely below 24°C — the architecture does most of the work. The fig tree in the courtyard is the only luxury that genuinely requires no maintenance.