Calling the city’s Riviera home, Ace Hotel & Swim Club Athens tunes into a nostalgic eternal summer by the cerulean sea.
Ace Hotel & Swim Club Athens is the first Ace in Greece and the second with a Swim Club. Designed by Atelier Ace and French architecture and design studio ciguë, the hotel draws on its brutalist bones, Greek modernism and seventies coastal resorts—all with Ace’s signature effervescent spirit.
The Riviera was popular among celebrities during the 60s and 70s, and its this golden era that tinges the 120 rooms, lobby, all-day French American restaurant, pool, cafe and gallery space. Whether by the pool, savouring the hospitality, or taking slow morning in one of the guest suites, Ace Hotel & Swim Club Athens is a laid-back design hive that makes the most of being outside the city centre.
The hotel is modelled on the same playful poolside culture as the first Ace Swim Club in Palm Springs. The ground floor flows out to the pool area, where guests lounge on beds, sit up at the bar, or in the adjacent dining space. The cantilevered balconies that surround the pool allow the individual rooms to borrow from this central outdoor space below and bask in the Mediterranean light.
ciguë describes its approach to design as radical collage—which was the perfect match for a city that’s known for vibrant contradictions. The interiors are a nod to both, with their neutral base, using materials that resemble the nearby sand and sea, metallic accents, timber veneer, graphic rugs and sixties and seventies vintage furniture. Original artworks take the form of expressive murals, tapestry, sculpture, painting, photography and mosaic, all by 18 local contemporary artists. The private rooms also feature custom bed covers by Greek-Egyptian designer Salma Barakat and trademark Ace furnishings like acoustic guitars and turntables, with a selection of books, magazine and vinyls—a beloved part of the Ace experience.
Good Chemistry, the hotel’s coffee shop on the ground floor, keeps guests caffeinated from the early morning, while breakfast is served in the all-day bistro space, Sebastian. It may be a French-American fare, but Sebastian’s menu by Athenian chef, Elvi Dimitris Zyba, is based on ‘the unbuttoned past of the Greek Riviera’.
Reviving the essence of its neighbourhood’s heyday, Ace Hotel & Swim Club Athens succeeds as a warm weather destination with a design edge, for both locals and guests.
Ace retail collaborations are on show in the 120 rooms, such as the robes, custom blankets designed by Salma Barakat.
Cantilevered balconies draw the pool’s atmosphere and Mediterranean light into each room.
