Euphoria Retreat

Set below the ruins of Mystras — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and once the second city of the Byzantine Empire — at the foot of Mount Taygetus in the Peloponnese, a couple of hours from Athens. Marina Efraimoglou spent a decade looking for the site and decided within minutes of arriving.

Her own story shapes the method. A former Greek investment banker who turned to Chinese medicine after a cancer diagnosis, she built the retreat around the Five Elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine, classical Greek philosophy and contemporary metabolic science — an unlikely combination that works because the location gives it a logic.

The spa is the centrepiece and genuinely unusual: four floors containing a Byzantine hammam, tepidarium, Finnish sauna, salt therapy room, watsu pool, and a four-metre-deep hydrotherapy pool circling a central sphere. The architecture takes its cues from Byzantine domes and monastic interiors rather than the pale minimalism of most wellness design.

Programmes run three, five, seven, ten or fourteen days, with diagnostics and nutritional work led by a molecular nutritionist. Marina hosts some retreats herself.

What distinguishes it from the Austrian and German clinics is temperament. The food is generous, the treatments long, and the model is built on pleasure rather than restriction. Guests wanting measurable rigour and a spartan regime should look to the Alpine clinics. Guests who want diagnostics, Chinese medicine and structured programmes without the austerity will find this the more sustainable version.