Around the World in Seven Beds: Finding the Aegean in the City at the Apollo Palm Hotel

The buzzy Athens accommodation draws inspiration from the creamy, golden light of the Greek isles.

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At the Apollo Palm Hotel, designer Mariette Sans-Rival married the bustle of Athens city life to the simple pleasures of waking up in the Greek islands to create 48 guest rooms with an airy polish: "Sometimes white sheets in the morning light contain the poetry of a sculpture," she says. And shades of white dominate, from creamy upholstered furniture (Sans-Rival loves what she calls a "talkative" armchair) to paints chosen for their light-reflecting qualities. Also on Sans-Rival’s mind as she conceptualized the project was the slippery light itself: "I discerned these different attitudes during the day, and I magnified them with yellow, white, and gold," she says.