Rebecca’s Return: Restoring a Village Café in the Mani

Rebecca’s Return: Restoring a Village Café in the Mani

When Rebecca left her mountain village in the Mani in 1951, she was a teenager in search of a future—part of the postwar exodus that emptied much of rural Greece. The old family café she grew up in was shuttered, like so many buildings across the peninsula, as people moved away and time stood still.

Now 91, Rebecca returns each year to the same stone structure, newly restored, just above the village square. What was once the heart of village life—a café where locals gathered to eat, talk, collect their mail, and buy a stamp—is now her home again. The wooden café floor remains. So does the sense of welcome.

Set high in the Taygetos foothills, the village saw little development for decades. Roads came only in the 1970s. Rebecca still remembers walking nine hours home from school when the sea was too rough for the boat. Life here was tough. But it was also rooted.

This project began with that same sense of rootedness. The house was not just a building to bring back—it was a story to continue. The original volumes were kept. Stone walls were repaired using traditional methods. The interior, once a dark maze of rooms, is now a quiet, light-filled space that opens back onto the square. The layout is new. The feeling is not.

Upstairs, Rebecca’s apartment is simple and calm. The windows open toward the sea. Clean lines sit alongside old stone. There is comfort here, and clarity—an architecture shaped as much by memory as by design.

For us, this is what restoration means: not just preserving the visible, but reactivating what’s been lost. In this case, a home. A meeting place. A return.

Rebecca now spends her summers in the house she once left behind. Her doctor says it’s the mountain air and sea breeze that keep her well. She thinks it might also be the old friends, familiar views, and the quiet stories still held by these walls.