A gift of 1813, built to give

In Kavala, on the Aegean coast of Northern Greece, stands one of Europe's rare Ottoman masterpieces, and a corner of Egypt on Greek soil. In 1813, Mohammed Ali Pasha, founder of modern Egypt, gave it to the town of his birth: a school and charitable foundation, with a great library, kitchens that fed students and travellers, fountains and gardens. Imaret still does what it was built to do. It gives. 

Its story is that of a family. The Missirians saved Imaret when it was falling into oblivion, and Anna Missirian brought it back to life, stone by stone, with a devotion you still feel in every room. She invited us to Kavala to feel it, live it and tell its story. Today, with their team, the Missirian family has entrusted us with its exclusive buyout. 

Three inner gardens of orange trees, fountains and shade. Domes, arcades and vaulted halls. Eight en-suite bedrooms, the quarters as Imaret calls them, dressed in raw linen in summer and silk velvet in winter, when the Ottoman fireplaces are lit. Kourasani walls, chestnut floors, copper lamps from Cairo. An elegance that never raises its voice. 

The exclusive buyout is the truest way to live Imaret: five or seven nights, the place entirely theirs, with breakfast each morning and every bedroom refreshed daily. Then comes the part we love to shape with you and Imaret, before arrival: candlelit dinners under the arcades, drawn from monastic tables and caliphs' kitchens, hammam and Ayurvedic rituals, watsu in the old stone cistern, a historian among the ruins of Philippi, a helicopter over Mount Athos. All on request, entirely bespoke. 

Here, every request is met with care, not because it is expected, but because it is who they are. 

From Imaret, Northern Greece unfolds, greener and cooler than the islands, even in August. Philippi, a UNESCO World Heritage site, lies twenty minutes away. 

Imaret is for those who travel to understand: a world unfolding in its own order.