A historic family home in the heart of Aegina Town
Built around 1801 and in the same family ever since, Thomaidou House sits on a quiet street in the centre of Aegina Town, directly across from the Markellos Tower. It sleeps six across two bedrooms, with three balconies, a roof terrace looking over the rooftops to the tower, and a walled garden with an aromatic herb walk.
The port, the markets and the beach are all a short walk downhill — and the house has kept its character while quietly picking up the things that matter: air conditioning in both bedrooms and the kitchen, fast Wi-Fi, a washing machine, and a proper kitchen.
The house was built around 1801 by Tarsitsa Thomaidou, as part of the resettlement of Aegina Town at the end of the Barbary pirate period. Raids had driven the island's population up into the mountains, to a settlement now known as Palea Hora — still standing, and well worth the trip.
Tarsitsa Thomaidou gave the house to our great-grandmother Penelope, whose name is on the marble plaque beside the upstairs front door. The kitchen and bathroom were added by our great-uncle Noulis in the 1950s; for roughly the first hundred years, the whole downstairs was unfinished storage.
Traces of the older house are still visible. The front porch began as a small wooden platform with a hatch — built so that boiling oil could be poured through it in the event of a pirate attack. The front windows of the main hall were once a wooden bay with narrow slits, possibly for the privacy of the women of the household in the Ottoman style, though the Ottomans never had a strong cultural presence here.
Pyrgos Markellou was raised on an earlier fortification built by the Venetians during their control of the island. It takes its name from Spyridon Markellos — a fighter in the Greek War of Independence, who restored the tower and opened what was his private residence to the military leaders, politicians and foreign Philhellenes who had come to the cause.
The building went on to serve as headquarters for the revolutionary government's committee, and when Aegina became the first capital of the new Greek state it became the residence of Ioannis Kapodistrias, Greece's first governor, from 1828 to 1829. It stands directly across the street, and you can see it from the roof terrace.
Thomaidou 7, Aegina 180 10, Greece
Directly opposite the Markellos Tower, five minutes' walk up from the port.
Bakeries, groceries and pharmacies are all within a few minutes' walk, and there are three outdoor cinemas in town — the closest, Anesis, is just around the corner.
For enquiries, availability or anything else, email [email protected].