Antiparos, Cyclades — your retreat reduced to the essentials.
An hour and twenty-five minutes by ferry from Piraeus to the island of Paros, then seven more minutes by car ferry across to its sister island, Antiparos. From the harbour you stroll into the white Chora, keeping left at Café Yam, up to the Kastro through narrow white alleys — many cats, few tourists. Islanders, a few Athenians and Berliners, two Parisian gallerists.
Request Documentation
Details
Status
For sale
Kastro & Trypa
Two restored houses in the Chora, the historic centre of the small island. Both houses were built around the end of the 18th century. They are part of the eight-metre-thick mesh of walls of the Venetian castle settlement. The houses can be acquired separately or as an ensemble.
I Kastro — the freestanding art gallery, alias atelier or live-in studio
At the foot of the walls of the Venetian fortification of 1440, the Kastro house sits on a sheltered little square — a place for siesta. A single, extra-high room with an adjoining secondary space. Pleasing proportions. Quiet. A mezzanine could be inserted to make fuller use of the volume. Renowned architects Andreas Fuhrimann and Gabrielle Hächler thoughtfully stripped House Chora back to its essentials, elegantly integrating bespoke built-in elements throughout.
Room program, materials
Main room 28 m² + secondary areas, ceiling height 3.86 m. Three deep arched windows — window seats — facing south, three skylights. Finely carpentered entrance door and shutters, patito floor, natural-lime walls, exposed timber-beam ceiling. Secondary functions — anteroom, storage, WC, sink, comfortable shower.
Eva Presenhuber used the space after the renovation as the gallery's summer project. The dimensions suit painting and sculpture. The proportions called for a Tobias Pils or a Joe Bradley to come into their own. A standout moment was At Arm's Length by Shara Hughes in 2019 – landscape paintings.
Whether you carry the space on as a gallery, as an atelier, as a private library, or as a contemplative live-in studio: the atmosphere is both dense and luminous, in shifting white.
II Trypa — the minimal town house
Just 150 steps separate Kastro from Trypa. In Greek, trypa translates as the hole, the cave, the opening in the rock. The building lives up to its name: a narrow gap between two larger houses, reached from the alley through a low door. Total floor area 34.37 m² — a place for one person, a person with a child, or a couple at ease with each other. Everything essential finds its place. Whoever summers here, or spends spring and autumn, lives with the town, the beach, the sea. The carefully executed renovation is by architect Stefan Pollhammer.
Room program, materials
Ground floor 18.76 m²: entrance, living room with fireplace, kitchenette, sink, storage 1.78 m², shower, connections for washing machine and refrigerator. Kitchen counter and sink are in Paros marble, with 40/40 mm steel tube as the load-bearing element. Upper floor 15.61 m²: bedroom with window seat, WC / sink 1.30 m², terrace 2.35 m², storage 1.79 m². Built-in storage beneath the staircase 0.76 m². Floors connected by the Samba timber spiral staircase.
The staircase, with its offset steps, is more danced than climbed: you swing up from the ground floor into the upper floor. Greek-blue timber shutters, four-part to the south, two-part to the west.
Eva Presenhuber & Antiparos
Galerie Eva Presenhuber — Zurich since 2003, Vienna since 2018 — curated one Antiparos exhibition each summer between 2014 and 2022. The island was, and remains, a quiet hotspot of the international art world, with off-spaces, interventions, and pop-ups — among them the Mykonos branch of Galerie Dio Horia. Architects too have left their traces: John Pawson, Décosterd & Rahm, Smiljan Radić, Camilo Rebelo, Fuhrimann Hächler. With the Trypa–Kastro constellation, Eva Presenhuber brought curatorial and artistic substance to a finely measured setting — private, intimate, exclusive, open only in summer and only during an exhibition.
The constellation comes to market because the gallery is no longer running its Antiparos summer programme. Both houses are handed over in their current state, with the built-in AFGH furniture included (table, window seats, staircase, cupboards). By arrangement, the houses can also be acquired separately.
Antiparos, the island
Antiparos has 1'300 permanent residents and five times as many in high season. One main street, the Chora, five beaches: Sifneikos Gialos, Soros, Apantima, Faneromeni, Agios Georgios. To the south, Tripiti — one of the oldest karst caves in Europe, with stalactites up to 7 metres. Restaurants: Captain Pipinos, Pipinos Fish Tavern, Yam, Margarita, Soulis. Good bakery: Yiannis. Summer months packed, winter completely still.
Getting there: Athens — domestic flight or high-speed ferry to Paros (3.5 h), Caïque crossing Pounta–Antiparos (7 min) hourly. Mykonos and Naxos 90 min by boat.
Our View
Whoever acquires Trypa and Kastro together inherits a carefully curated constellation.
For those considering only one property: Trypa represents the ultimate reduction of a Cycladic house to its essential form, without sacrificing functionality. Kastro, by contrast, is a singular summer retreat for those arriving on the island with art, an atelier, or writing in mind. You can also live in Kastro. As a side note, property values in Antiparos Chora have appreciated by approximately 4–8% annually over the past decade, reflecting the island’s sustained appeal and limited supply.
