Katikies Garden Santorini Review: A Monastery in the Heart of Fira

When I planned our Santorini trip, I had no intention of spending three nights at the same resort. The island’s luxury hotels are remarkably varied despite occupying a relatively small area, so instead we booked three consecutive Fine Hotels + Resorts stays. Vedema would introduce us to traditional village life in Megalochori, Katikies Garden would put us in the middle of Fira, and Magma Resort would provide a quieter final stop before flying home.

The aim wasn’t to identify the “best” hotel. It was to understand, and possibly contrast, what each property offered once you looked beyond their own marketing. Like the other two hotels we chose, Katikies Garden sits below many of Santorini’s headline luxury prices because it isn’t one of the famous caldera-front resorts built into the cliffs. Those hotels largely sell the same proposition: uninterrupted views across the volcanic bay from your own terrace or pool.

And like the others, Katikies Garden doesn’t try to compete on those terms. Instead, it offers something quite different. Housed within a restored Catholic monastery near the top of Fira, Katikies Garden puts you inside the town rather than directly on the caldera. The restaurants, bars and pedestrian streets are only a few minutes away, although getting back to the hotel generally means climbing. You can still reach the famous caldera views easily, but they aren’t the organizing principle of the hotel.

That sounded like an appealing alternative. Whether one night would prove enough to experience both the hotel and Fira properly was another question altogether.

Just like our airport transfer to Vedema in Megalochori the previous day, the Uber from Vedema to Katikies Garden in Fira cost €40. That quickly became our benchmark for travelling around much of the island, although longer journeys apparently attract higher fares.

The only slightly awkward part came when we arrived. Our driver stopped in the public parking area above the hotel and indicated that this was where we should get out.

What neither he nor the Marriott app made particularly clear was that Katikies Garden doesn’t have an obvious roadside entrance. Reception sits below street level, reached via a pedestrian walkway that continues beyond the hotel towards Fira itself.

Without realizing that, we wandered into the property through the upper entrance generally used by guests arriving for dinner at Selene.

It wasn’t a serious problem, but it’s useful to know before you arrive. If you’re arriving by taxi or Uber, it’s worth asking the driver where the hotel entrance is before getting out in the parking area.

The first staff member we encountered took our luggage off our hands and showed us the way to the reception area. Already, this aspect felt different from the Vedema resort.

The monastery is evident almost as soon as you enter. The hotel has been fitted into and around the old structure, so the vaulted corridors, courtyards and stairs aren’t confined to one historic section of the property. You pass through them simply getting between reception, the rooms and the courtyard.

Check-in also brought our second room upgrade in as many nights. We had originally booked a Junior Suite, but were instead shown to a Senior Suite with a private rooftop terrace and spa pool. Waiting inside was a bottle of Selene Rosé together with a selection of local truffle-style sweets.

The suite itself could wait. Within a few minutes of arriving we found ourselves discussing a rather more difficult decision.

One of the reasons Katikies Garden has earned such a strong reputation is that it shares its monastery with Selene, one of Greece’s best-known restaurants. Long before we arrived, I’d assumed we’d book dinner there.

The reality became more complicated once we looked at the menu. Dinner at Selene is built around multi-course tasting menus starting at €170 per person before wine. There wasn’t a smaller à la carte option that would let us sample the restaurant while still leaving time for the rest of the evening.

Ordinarily that wouldn’t have mattered. The complication was that this was also our only night in Fira. Choosing Selene meant giving up the opportunity to settle into a restaurant overlooking the caldera and watch Santorini’s famous sunset unfold over several hours. Choosing the sunset meant postponing Selene for another trip.

Instead, we used our Fine Hotels + Resorts dining credit for a late lunch, explored the monastery and wine cellars, then headed into Fira to experience the town properly while we had the chance.

That decision also exposed the problem with having only one night at Katikies Garden. Vedema had naturally drawn us into the resort. Here, the hotel put us within walking distance of enough things we wanted to do that something had to give. This time it was dinner at Selene.

The Senior Suite was large. The entrance opened into a long room with the sofa along one wall before the space widened into the bedroom, with a desk and dining table beyond. The photograph below looks back toward the entrance, so it captures one end of what was a much larger room.

The bedroom window looked onto the courtyard below, while the desk and dining table occupied the far end of the room. To better understand the layout: the sofa seen in the image above is behind the bed in the background in the image below.

Outside the suite was a large private terrace with a table and chairs, enclosed by the surrounding hotel buildings and landscaping.

The Senior Suite also came with a rooftop terrace, reached separately from the terrace outside the room. It had two loungers, seating and a private spa pool, with views across the monastery roofs and towards the Aegean.

We went up to try the pool later that evening, expecting something closer to a hot tub. It wasn’t: the water was cool enough that we got back out fairly quickly. That would probably be welcome in the heat of the afternoon, but it wasn’t especially tempting late in the evening.

Beyond the parts of the monastery we passed through during the normal course of the stay, there were several spaces worth seeking out. The Wine Rooms were the best example.

They occupy long vaulted spaces below ground, with bottles stored along the walls and communal tables through one of the rooms. Down there, the cooler air and enclosed stone spaces make the building’s earlier life much easier to picture.

Although we’d decided against dinner, we still wanted to eat at the hotel. Fine Hotels + Resorts includes a dining credit, and using it for a late lunch proved to be an excellent compromise. We could experience the hotel’s food, enjoy one of its most attractive spaces and still leave ourselves an entire evening to explore Fira.

Lunch is served in the same courtyard that becomes Selene’s dining room in the evening. We sat in the permanent seating closer to the bar; the tables used for Selene’s dinner service are brought into the main courtyard later in the day. So we were eating in essentially the same setting, but without committing the evening to the full tasting-menu experience. We were told, however, that Selene has its own kitchen staff, separate from those preparing the hotel’s other meals.

At our late lunch, we were the only guests. We shared fresh bread with dips before trying out the intriguing Santorini tomato fritters, and also scampi with orzo.

It was good. The food was fresh, well prepared and worked well before an afternoon exploring Fira. The tomato fritters, which had caught my attention because they were unfamiliar, were particularly good.

The courtyard changes throughout the day. Over our one-night stay we saw the courtyard perform three different jobs: our late lunch, Selene’s formal dinner service that evening and hotel breakfast the following morning. The furniture, clientele, and apparently even the kitchen staff, changed, but all three happened in the same central space.

We finished lunch, and followed our earlier decision: the rest of the afternoon belonged to Fira.

Leaving Katikies Garden puts you straight into Fira. We walked downhill through the pedestrian streets towards the caldera, passing shops, churches and restaurants along the way. The trade-off became apparent on the way back: Katikies sits near the top of Fira, so returning to the hotel means climbing.

We didn’t follow any particular route. We started down the pedestrian path in front of the hotel, then wandered into side alleys and beyond. We drifted past churches, looked in a few shops, saw cats sleeping in the shade and gradually found ourselves moving towards the western edge of town where the views begin to open up. As the afternoon progressed, the streets became steadily busier. Cruise ship passengers mixed with guests staying on the island, restaurants filled and every opening towards the caldera attracted another group stopping for photographs.

Passing restaurant after restaurant, we eventually settled on Lithos, situated above the main pedestrian path overlooking the caldera, and decided to stay for the evening rather than continue searching for somewhere else.

Arriving at Lithos relatively early, we stayed for around three hours, ordering drinks and dinner as the sun went down. That was what we’d wanted from our one evening in Fira, and confirmed the decision not to commit it to Selene’s tasting menu. Over the next three hours the view changed constantly. Cruise ships shifted position in the bay, the white buildings gradually took on warmer colors and the pace of the town seemed to slow as more people stopped to watch the sun sink towards the horizon.

On the path below us, many people seemed to treat the sunset as something to collect rather than experience. They would arrive, spend a few minutes taking photographs from the edge of the caldera and then move on in search of another viewpoint or another restaurant. Sitting at the same table throughout the evening offered a completely different perspective. Rather than chasing the sunset, we watched it unfold at its own pace while Fira carried on around us.

That confirmed we’d made the right decision by skipping dinner at Selene. Had we booked the tasting menu, we would almost certainly have enjoyed an outstanding meal, but we would also have missed one of Santorini’s defining experiences. The hotel would still have been excellent. But the evening would have been different.

Walking back to the hotel after dark revealed another side of the property. The monastery corridors that had been bright and busy during the afternoon were now softly lit and almost silent. Returning after dark meant walking through the courtyard while Selene’s dinner service was still underway. Hotel guests and restaurant diners therefore share the same central space, something that had been much less obvious during our nearly empty late lunch.

Before returning to our suite we wandered up to the main pool, which sits above the courtyard and enjoys wider views than much of the rest of the property. The bar had already closed and no guests remained outside at this stage. Looking down, we could see the courtyard transformed once again, this time into Selene’s evening dining room, a striking contrast with the relaxed lunch we’d enjoyed there only a few hours earlier.

Later that evening we took the Selene Rosé up to the rooftop terrace and opened it there. We also tried the spa pool, but the water was too cool to make lingering especially appealing by that point in the evening. So we kept moving downstairs, wine in hand, and ended up drinking it on the private terrace outside our suite.

That lower terrace turned out to be the better place to finish the evening.

Breakfast brought us back to the courtyard for the third time. The Selene tables from the night before had disappeared and the space was back to being the hotel terrace where we’d eaten lunch. Breakfast was entirely à la carte: coffee, juice, bread and fruit followed by cooked dishes. Everything we ordered was good, and there was no rush to finish before checkout.

Service worked well throughout our stay. Check-in was efficient, our room upgrade was explained clearly and communication through WhatsApp made it easy to ask questions. After checkout, the hotel contacted us about a charging cable we’d left behind and arranged for us to recover it the following day.

We booked Katikies Garden through American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts, which included breakfast for two, a property dining credit, noon check-in when available, a room upgrade subject to availability and guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout. We used the dining credit for lunch rather than dinner, a decision that worked particularly well given our plan to spend the evening in Fira. Combined with the upgrade to a Senior Suite with its rooftop terrace and spa pool, the program added genuine value.

Katikies Garden works particularly well if you want to move easily between the hotel and Fira. We could walk out for the afternoon, dinner or sunset and return to a hotel that was interesting in its own right. The location near the top of town does mean climbing back from the caldera, something worth knowing before booking.

One night wasn’t really enough. We had time to explore the hotel, use our FHR credit for lunch, spend the evening in Fira and have breakfast the following morning, but dinner at Selene had to go. I don’t regret that decision; with only one evening available, I’d make it again.

That also explains why Katikies Garden occupied such a different place in our Santorini trip from Vedema. Vedema gave us a reason to stay within the property and Megalochori around it. Katikies Garden gave us a base from which to experience Fira, with a genuinely unusual hotel waiting when we came back.

Three Santorini Resorts, Compared Side By Side

While We Were There: Fira, Santorini

Vedema Resort Santorini, A Luxury Hotel Built Into a Village

While We Were There: Megalochori, Santorini

Magma Resort Santorini

While We Were There: Oia, Santorini