ELG Contessa Boutique Hotel is located in the old town of Chania, right next to the Venetian harbour and only at 13 minutes walk from the beach of Nea Chora.
It constitutes a part of Chania’s Venetian period history. Its modern history dates back to 1860 (for which we have found lease agreements). "Contessa Hotel" is one of the few buildings in the old town of Chania built with an ottoman architecture. It is historicaly very important; the contracts from its build time (back in the 1860) have been found, in which its original shape can bee seen -a shape which has been, since then, altered over the last century! The owner still remembers his grandmother, who lived in the house until 1978, describing him that the building had once become the French Consulate, after the liberation of Crete from the Turks, in 1911. That grandmother was a prominent personality, a real Countess; this was the reason the director of the Greek National Tourism in Chania proposed the name "Contessa" ("Countess" in Italian), when the house was transformed into a traditional hotel in the old harbour, in 1982. Since then, the hotel had the honour to house guests such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the UK (Mr. Dr How), Greek artists such as Loukianos Kelaidonis and Giannis Smaragdis, and others. The hotel also appears in movie scenes such as "Zorbas the Greek" (Antony Queen) and "The two faces of January" (starring Vinko Mortenssen and Kristin Danst).
Enjoy a really magnificent world and discover the charm and the quality-of-life in a hotel which has been recently renovated, and which has so much to offer to its special guests: from the carefully chosen design of the salon and the rooms, down to the friendly personnel, the breath-taking view and the accessibility to the old town of Chania.
