The story of Costa Navarino is a true-life saga of the community that the captain built—the captain being the late mariner, Captain Vassilis Constantakopoulos. He started buying land on the west coast of the Peloponnese of Greece, three hours from Athens. And as more and more small holdings became available, he bought them too, accruing land until he had 2,500 acres. And by the beginning of the 20th century, he had a plan. He knew what it was going to be. It was funded partly by equity from the family, partly by bank loans, and roughly on a one-third, one-third, one-third basis. The remainder was the development facility of state subsidies. That was the setup.

Now we have Costa Navarino, named for the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Hotels were a very valuable part of the whole. First one up was Los Romanos, a Luxury Collection property. Then came a Westin. Since then, siblings have been added: W Hotel and, some would say the crème de la crème, Mandarin Oriental. Phase one also included golf courses, managed by Troon Golf—there’s a Bernhard Langer, and a Robert Trent Jones, (somewhat poignant, because Trent Jones’s great-grandfather competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics). There are also two Jose Maria Olazábal courses. There are olive trees, over three and a half thousand of them, and other trees, and half a million shrubs. And there’s the equivalent of a town square, the Agora, a fabulous facility built around an inlet of the sea. It’s got a bijou icon-studded church with icons. Around are inviting boutiques and busy cafés.

There’s no airport here, but Costa Navarino is only half an hour from Kalamata, which gains better international airlift every year. There’s also helicopter service to Athens’s Fraport-run airport, Eleftherios Venizelos, named for a prominent early 20th-century Greek statesman.

What’s it like staying—or living—here at Costa Navarino? Owned residences connected to The Dunes are sculpted into the coast-set rolling landscape. They, like all of the hotels, offer space, and calm, and wellness, history, and culture (there’s a Bernaki Museum shop at The Agora).

Those staying at the 99-room Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino over any weekend are in for a treat as that’s when, late morning, hotel chef Bertrand Valegeas invites hotel guests to come along the jetty to watch the little boat that comes in daily with the harvest of one fisherman who’s been out all night catching whatever he can. The culinary message is clear. Greek pride justifiably hopes, in this area, that as much of everything as possible should be local. In the room, for instance, there were gifts with six exquisite handwritten explanatory notes. One was a little snack with fresh anchovies, which embodied Messinia’s resilient spirit and quiet pride. Another plate, china, held another “plate,” a flattened prickly pear, in turn holding skinned slices of the red fruit. And so on.

Time for lunch. About half an hour after chef had made his selection, a perfectly-cooked seabass appears at table in open-air Oliviera, to be served with lemon and olive oil, and paired with a Single Vineyard Rosé 2024 Ktima Alpha, from the Amyntaio region of Macedonia. It was so agreeable, eating open to the elements of the Peloponnese, that we dined there too. A tasting meal started with seaweed-marinated tuna and a bread presentation where three different kinds of bread had oregano dropped over them with three different olive oils. Then, also preamble, came a made-in-front-of-you Greek salad (oil, but no vinegar or lemon, and cubed feta put on last). The meal included lamb navarin with spring garden vegetables—the dish invented by a French admiral, Henri de Rigny, to celebrate the historic victory of the Battle of Navarino. Continue dining like a lord, or at least an admiral: at breakfast the buffet comes to you on a laden wooden tray—piped Greek yoghurt topped with walnuts and little bits of honeycomb, katiki domoku cheese, and much more.

You feel good, and so you should. The setting, the beautiful villas, a spa that includes Greek-owned 111Skin… All this is enhanced by the hotel’s colleagues who, led by sports-mad GM Raul Levis, make you feel part of the family. The hotel’s seasonal, and when it’s open, the employee count is 400. During closure, November through to March, 330 of them go back home, mostly to the Kalamata region, to help with their families’ lucrative olive harvest (plus they get government unemployment grants). They’re happy, and happiness is infectious.

Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino is, frankly, the kind of Aegean resort that you dream about, and when you know it, you want to go back again and again.