CHAPTERS
THE FERMORS
THE HOUSE
THE DONATION

The website was created by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), in collaboration with the Benaki Museum, which undertook the scientific documentation of the content. The rights to the photographs and archival material presented on the website belong to the Benaki Museum. The design, text editing, and production of the website were carried out by the SNF.

PRIVACY POLICY
VISIT THE HOUSE

THIS LONG AND
FASCINATING JOURNEY

SCROLL

MANI

This long and fascinating journey [into Mani], like those which preceded and followed it, was a matter of countless bus-rides and long stretches on horseback and by mule and on foot and on inter-island streamers and caiques and very rarely, for a sybaritic couple of weeks or so, on a yacht.

All of Greece is absorbing and rewarding. There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition; and talk andincident, nearly all of it odd or memorable,thicken round the traveller’s path at every step.

CHAPTER 1

PADDY & JOAN LEIGH FERMOR
PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR
(1915 - 2011)

Patrick Leigh Fermor (‘Paddy’ to his friends) was born in London, to parents of Irish and English descent.

Since his school years he was mostly interested in classical literature and the works of Shakespeare.

Patrick Leigh

At the age of eighteen, he abandoned the prospect of an army career; with the Oxford Book of English Verse and the Odes of Horace as his sole companions, he set out without a travel plan on the long journey on foot across Europe all the way to Constantinople, a journey that he eventually continued into Greece.

Patrick Leigh

From December 1933 to January 1935, he walks through mainland Europe from Holland to Constantinople.

Patrick Leigh

He continues his journey in the monasteries of Mount Athos and ends up in Athens.

During World War II, he joined the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Hiding in caves on the mountains of Crete, he actively contributed to the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation.

The highlight of his Resistance days was the abduction of the German military commander of Crete, General Heinrich Kreipe, in April 1944.

Highlight of his Resistance days
Time of Gifts, pages 17-18

A plan unfolded with the speed and the completeness of a Japanese paper flower in a tumbler. To change scenery; abandon London and England and set out across Europe like a tramp – or, as I characteristically phrased it to myself, like a pilgrim or a palmer, an errant scholar, a broken knight or the hero of The Cloister and the Hearth! All of a sudden, this was not merely the obvious, but the only thing to do. I would travel on foot, sleep in hayricks in summer, shelter in barns when it was raining or snowing and only consort with peasants and tramps. If I lived on bread and cheese and apples, jogging along on fifty pounds a year like Lord Durham with a few noughts knocked off, there would be even some cash left over for paper and pencils and an occasional mug of beer. A new life! Freedom! Something to write about! […]

I wondered during the first few days whether to enlist a companion; but I knew that the enterprise had to be solitary and the break complete. I wanted to think, write, stay or move on at my own speed and unencumbered, to gaze at things with a changed eye and listen to new tongues that were untainted by a single familiar word. With any luck the humble circumstances of the journey would offer no scope for English or French. Flights of unknown syllables would soon be rushing into purged and attentive ears.

Christmas 1944

Joan
Portrait of Joan by Paddy, 1946.
He meets Joan in Cairo
A good thing turned up in the shape of Joan Rainer […] she’s got a good brain and talks about bull-fights and Spanish poets.
I think you would like her.
letter by William Stanley Moss (Billy) to Paddy, who hadn’t yet met Joan, dated 5/12/1944, Cooper, 200
Joan Leigh Fermor
(1912 - 2003)
Joan Eyres Monsell was born in Dumbleton, England, to a noble and wealthy family. Since her school years, Joan fell in love ith the art of photography.

During World War II, she worked as a photographer recording Blitz damage on London buildings. Thanks to her knowledge in cryptography, she worked for the British Embassies in Madrid, Algier and Cairo where, in late 1944, she met her future husband, Patrick Leigh Fermor.

After the end of the War, they both lived and worked in Athens for two years, creating strong bonds of friendship with Greek intellectuals and artists.

During their travels in the Greek countryside, Joan would photograph landscapes, buildings, men, women and children. A selection of these photographs from the 1950s was included in Paddy’s books Mani and Roumeli.

Joan on horse
THE YEARS IN POST-WAR
GREECE
1945 – 1946
He works as deputy director of advanced English studies at the British Council in Athens. During this period and through George Katsimbalis, Paddy and Joan meet Greek intellectuals, artists and writers, among whom the founder of the Museum, Antonis Benakis, the painter Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and the poet George Seferis.
George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951
George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951. Collection of George G. Katsimbalis(G. Katsimbalis Photographic Archive)
1950
With Joan and others he criss-crosses the Peloponnese ending up at Tainaro.
1951
1954 – 1955
Together with Joan they stay at the house of Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika on Hydra, where he writes the largest part of Mani.
George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951
Niko Ghika and Paddy in Ghika’s studio, Hydra, 1955.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive
George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951
Niko Ghika with Joan, Hydra, 1955.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive
“The house seems to hang in there. Air and light and reflected radiance and whatever cool breezes visit the island stream through the rooms unhindered. The whole house casts a singular and benevolent spell.”
[the house of Hydra described by Paddy, see Arapoglou, 54]
George Katsimbalis, George Seferis and Paddy in Athens, 1951
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Wild Garden, 1959. Oil on canvas, 113 x 144 cm.
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, inv. no. ΠΧΓ57.
1958
Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958)
The cover of the first edition of Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (1958), painted by John Craxton.
His book Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese is published in London by John Murray Publishing House. Τhe translation of Mani into Greek by Tzannis Tzannetakis is published by Kedros Publishers in 1972 and the translation by Michalis Makropoulos is published by Metaichmio Publications in 2021.
Dedication by Paddy to Joan in his book Mani
Dedication by Paddy to Joan in his book Mani, Kardamyli 1958.Benaki Museum / Donated by Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor
John Craxton, Gorge, 1960
John Craxton, Gorge, 1960. Oil on canvas, 104.5 x 83.7 cm Private collection, Rome
Paddy travels with John Craxton on the mountains of Epirus.

CHAPTER 2

The house in Kardamyli
1962
Paddy and Joan buy a piece of land in the Kalamitsi area of Kardamyli.
1964 - 1967
Blessing in Kardamyli during the construction of their house, 1964
Benaki Museum / Donated by Olivia Stewart
Paddy in front of the tent where he lived with Joan during the construction of their house, 1964.
Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor Benaki Museum / Donated by Olivia Stewart

Paddy and Joan build their home in Kardamyli, designed by the architect Nikos Hadjimichalis.

At the age of fifty, this is the first house Paddy owns.

The Englishman’s Room, page 92
Our headland jutted between a bay and a small cove and there was nothing on it but olive terraces, thristles, asphodels and an occasional tortoise, and here we pitched our tents exactly where the chief room was to be. There was rock for building everywhere; the friendly and excellent workmen were stonecutters to a man.
Travel, page 23
We found a piece of land by the sea, became koumbaroi of a master-mason called Niko Kolokotronis, the last of a long line of master-masons originally from Arcadia, who had all played the violin; and we gathered a small team of stone-cutters and builders and settled in tents: reading Vitruvius and Palladio, learning what we could from the Mani buildings, and planning the house as it went up with our architect friend Niko Hadjimichali whenever he could get away from Athens. We were given the raw material free – all of it peach or russet-coloured limestone which we hacked and blasted out of the side of the Taygetus.
Construction
of the
House
Paddy on the roof of the Leigh Fermor House during its construction
Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate
The Leigh Fermor House during its construction
Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate
Paddy with the workmen during the construction of the House
Photograph: Joan Leigh Fermor
© Joan Leigh Fermor Estate

Construction of the house lasts from 1965 to 1967.

Its final form is inspired by Paddy’s journeys as well as by the surrounding area of the Mani. A characteristic example is the prominent arcade where all the rooms of the ground floor connect—a callback to Leigh Fermor’s stays at monasteries in France and Greece.

Leigh Fermor works with local craftsmen while gathering materials and spolia from the surrounding area around to embed in the stonework.

“The masons and workmen are marvellous chaps, terribly excited about what they are up to, and enormous fun; all from the nearby hill villages.”
from a letter to Ann Fleming, November 1966,
Dashing, 249

“The stone, chopped out of the mountainside a quarter a mile away, and brought here by mule, as there’s only a goat path, is such a lovely colour, that it can’t be ugly. We’ve managed to find a lot of old and faded tiles, discoloured russet; so with luck, the whole thing will melt into the surroundings and almost disappear.”

from a letter to Balasha Cantacuzène, July 1966, Dashing, 241

The pebbles used for the mosaics around the house were collected from three different beaches around the area, according to their color, while the tiles in the courtyard were made at the Anagnostaras tile factory in Kalamata.
LIFE AT THE HOUSE

The Englishman’s Room

“[…] and every seventh of November, which is the Feast of SS. Michael and Gabriel – and also my name-day (Miháli, in Greek) – the room fills a special role. These Archangels have a minute chapel three fields away, and after the yearly Mass, a swarm of village friends, sometimes fifty or sixty, led by the bearded vicar with his bun and stove-pipe hat, come in for a long chat and drinks and mézé. Thanks to the divans – suddenly lined with venerable figures in black coifs – the room can hold them all without too much of a squash, and in spite of the immovable table there is plenty of space left in the middle for dancing; and when, later on, the complicated steps of the syrtos and the kalamatiano, accompanied by clapping and singing, begin to weave their nimble circles round the central star, the room seems to have come into its own at last.”

The Englishman’s Room

“Where a man’s Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is, there shall his heart be also’; and, of course, Lemprière, Fowler, Brewer, Liddell and Scott, Dr Smith, Harrap and Larousse and a battery of atlases, bibles, concordances, Loeb classics, Pléiade editions, Oxford Companions and Cambridge histories;  anthologies and books on painting, sculpture, architecture, birds, beasts, reptiles, fishes and trees; for if one is settling in the wilds, a dozen reference shelves is the minimum, and they must be near the dinner table where arguments spring up which have to be settled then or never.

This being so, two roles for the chief room in a still unbuilt house were clear from the start.”

Visitors' Book

At the House in Kardamyli, Paddy and Joan kept a Visitors' Book, where all guests would write their impressions or make a sketch or simply sign and note the dates of their stay.

The first guest to sign the book was the architect of the House, Nikos Hatzimichalis (1967) and among the last names that appear at the book in 2011 was that of the former director of the Benaki Museum, Angelos Delivorrias, marking, in a way, the start of the next phase of the house’s future.

Over a period of 44 years, famous personalities from the world of arts and letters as well as friends and relatives of the Leigh Fermors stayed at the House. Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika and his wife Barbara, George Seferis, John Craxton, Tzannis Tzannetakis, Freya Stark, Lord Jellicoe and his family, John Betjeman, Bruce Chatwin, and many others.

Niko Ghika painting the lion’s head which is embedded to this day on the wall in the arcade of the house in Kardamyli, 1968
Benaki Museum / Ghika Gallery, Photographic Archive
John Betjeman, A Few Late Chrysanthemums (London: John Murray 1954). Copy from the house in Kardamyli with a handwritten inscription of the writer “Inscribed in the Messenian Gulf, John Betjeman for Paddy…1969 September”.
Giorgos Seferis, Poems (Athens: Ikaros 1964). Copy from the house in Kardamyli with a handwritten inscription “To Ioanna of Kardamyli with love George Seferis”
Freya Stark, Beyond Euphrates. Autobiography 1928-1933 (London: John Murray 1951). Copy from the house in Kardamyli with a handwritten inscription “Inscribed by Freya Stark for Joan & Paddy”
The House and the writer
When Paddy moves to Kardamyli, Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966) have already been published.
In Kardamyli, Paddy revisits his journey in Europe, which was completed forty or fifty years before, and writes A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986), with only his exceptional experiential memory to refer to as his diaries and notebooks has been lost. In A Time of Gifts, he describes his journey from Holland to Czechoslovakia, while in Between the Woods and the Water, he writes about his journey to the boarders of Romania and Bulgaria.
the Broken Road, page 154-155
“…while piecing together fragments which have lain undisturbed for two decades and more, all at once a detail will surface which acts as potently as the taste of madeleine which made the whole of Proust’s childhood unfurl. The haul of irrelevant detail, interlocking trains of thought and associations, and the echoes of echoes re-echoed and ricocheted is overwhelming, and in the hopes of attaining some redeeming shadow of symmetry ad balance, a lot of this irrelevant catch must be thrown away again to swim back to the dark pools where it has been lurking all this time. This, for a writer who is his own worst subeditor, is a harrowing task.”


Paddy at the village of Petrovouni, above Kardamyli
Photograph: Olivia Stewart
2003
Joan dies at the house in Kardamyli on 4 June 2003.
Joan’s tombstone in Dumbleton cemetery was engraved with an olive branch and the Greek phrase May the earth rest lightly on her’, combining the two elements that accompanied her throughout her life: Greek language and the nature of Mani.
...Νο Μill House over Christmas time, alas, where I would be gallivanting in the North, because no Joan! It seems incredible, and hard to get used to. Oddly enough, it’s over jokes that the absence is brought home most: during the … slogging away in the morning, something crops up and I say to myself “I must remember to tell Joan that at lunch. It will make her laugh.” All sorts of things like that. All the freesias she planted last year are shooting up through the grass, a marvellous display. She would have been pleased… I’ve a tumblerful on my desk. They smell lovely… The cats miss her terribly, so do I…
from Paddy’s letter to Billa Harrod, Kardamyli, 2004,
Τhe Photographs of Joan Leigh Fermor, 272–273
2004
He is knighted by the H.M. Queen Elizabeth.
2011
On 11 June 2011, at the age of 96, Paddy passes away at his house in Dumbleton.
In a short biography of Proust which was found in his room in Kardamyli, he had written a message in the middle of the night, at a moment when he felt the end was close. [Cooper, 389]
Love to all and kindness to all friends, and thank you all for a life of great happiness.

CHAPTER 3

The Leigh Fermors’ donation to the Benaki Museum
The relationship between Paddy and the Benaki Museum’s founder, Antonis Benakis, goes back to the mid 1940s.
In 1996, Paddy and Joan decide to donate their home to the Benaki Museum and sign the donation contract with the then President of the Museum and Paddy’s friend Irini Kalliga. According to the terms of the donation contract, the Museum will acquire the ownership of the house following Paddy’s and Joan’s deaths.
Joan and I have decided to give this place to a wonderful institution called the Benaki Museum, who long for it, one lives in it for as long as one of us, still surviving, is still on the scene, then they take it over and look after it forever. They are terribly nice – well they must be, to hanker for such an odd place.
In Tearing Haste, 308
The support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) marks a new chapter for the House
The Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor House always stood as a beacon of cultural and intellectual exchange. Thanks to the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), this historic estate has been restored to its former glory, ensuring its role as a center for learning, creativity, and collaboration.
As the Lead Donor, SNF played a crucial role in the preservation of the Patrick Leigh Fermor House. Beginning in 2016, the Foundation funded an in-depth study on the house’s operations and sustainability, followed by extensive maintenance and repair work. The goal was to maintain the original architectural integrity of the property, designed in the 1960s by Nikos Hadjimichalis in collaboration with the Fermors. By early 2019, restoration was complete, and the house reopened to the public for guided tours and visits.
THE RENOVATION
THE INTERIOR
A Hub for Creativity
Honoring the Fermors’ vision, the house has served, and it still does, as a retreat for scholars, artists, and writers. Over the years, it has hosted a variety of cultural and educational initiatives, including fellowships, residencies, and events that foster intellectual exchange and artistic creation. As a dynamic space, it continues to welcome new ideas and programs that contribute to its evolving legacy.
Sustaining the Legacy
To ensure the long-term sustainability of the house, the Benaki Museum manages operations, including an agreement for short-term rentals during a limited period each year. This partnership helps maintain the estate while keeping it accessible to the public, researchers, and artists.
Through SNF’s commitment, the Patrick Leigh Fermor House continues to flourish as a space where culture, history, and creativity converge, celebrating the enduring legacy of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable literary figures.
For more information on upcoming fellowship programs and events, visit Benaki Museum’s official page.