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A retreat venue · Chania, Crete

A quiet house
where teachers, healers
and gatherers work.

Olea House is a private venue in the old hills outside Chania, available to experts hosting retreats, workshops and seminars. Stone walls, olive light, the sea two valleys away — a setting that holds the work without competing with it.

Sleeps 14 40 min from CHQ Year-round
Enquire about dates → View the spaces
A house for the kind of work that needs a horizon.
Yoga & breathwork retreats Writing residencies Leadership intensives Somatic workshops Plant medicine integration Photography weeks Team off-sites Yoga & breathwork retreats Writing residencies Leadership intensives Somatic workshops Plant medicine integration Photography weeks Team off-sites
— The house

A 200-year-old house, slowly re-made for gathering.

Olea was a working olive estate for six generations before the trees grew quiet. We spent four years restoring the main house and outbuildings with local stonemasons and carpenters, keeping the bones — the lime walls, the cypress beams, the worn marble thresholds — and adding only what a circle needs to do its work.

The result is not a hotel. There is no front desk and no programming. There is a kitchen, a long table, a studio with sprung floors, two small therapy rooms, and a courtyard that holds twenty people at dusk. You bring the cohort. The house holds the rest.

“We built this for the practitioners we always wished we had a place to send.”
— For hosts

What the house is good for.

Olea is rented exclusively — one cohort at a time. We host roughly twenty retreats a year, mostly five to seven nights. These are the formats the house was shaped for.

The studio at dawn
01 / Movement & body

Yoga, breathwork & somatic retreats

A 70m² studio with sprung oak floors, north light, and quiet. Props, bolsters and blankets for sixteen are on site. Practitioners we have hosted: Iyengar, Vinyasa, Embodiment, TRE, breathwork lineages.

A desk facing the olives
02 / Writing & creative

Writing & creative residencies

Eight private rooms with desks facing olive or sea. A shared reading room, a long table for evening workshop, and the kind of silence that makes mornings worth keeping. We have hosted poetry, screenwriting, memoir and editorial weeks.

The east therapy room
03 / Therapeutic work

Somatic & integration intensives

Two soundproofed therapy rooms with private entrances, suitable for one-to-one work alongside group programming. The house regularly hosts integration weeks for trained facilitators working with cohorts of eight to fourteen.

The marble boardroom
04 / Leadership & teams

Leadership intensives & off-sites

Reliable fibre, a projector, a private board-room with a marble table for ten, and zero distractions beyond the cicadas. Used by founders, leadership teams and trainers who want a real change of altitude.

A long supper outside
05 / Culinary & wine

Culinary, fermentation & wine weeks

A working kitchen built around a wood-fired bread oven, an outdoor hearth, and a 40m² walled garden of herbs and vegetables. The estate's own oil and a small library of Cretan wines are at your disposal.

Chania, just over the hill
06 / Photography & film

Photography & film workshops

The hills, the harbour, the goat paths and the salt flats are inside a thirty-minute drive. The house itself has been used as a stills location. We will quietly handle local permits and a fixer when needed.

14guests
Comfortable sleeping for fourteen across eight bedrooms, all en-suite.
70m²
Practice studio with sprung floors, props, and a quiet courtyard outside.
1.2ha
Private estate — gardens, terraces, an old chapel, and 200 olive trees.
40min
From Chania International Airport. We can arrange private transfers.
— What's included

The practical side.

The rental is a turnkey hand-over of the entire estate. Below is what's always on site; we'll build the rest around your programme — caterers, drivers, translators, additional facilitators, hammam access in town.

Request the full deck →
  • i.

    Studio & breakout rooms

    70m² practice studio, two soundproofed therapy rooms, a 10-seat boardroom with screen and high-speed fibre, and an open library.

  • ii.

    Accommodation

    Eight en-suite bedrooms across the main house and granary, sleeping up to fourteen. Linens, towels, robes and Cretan olive-oil soap are provided.

  • iii.

    Kitchen & dining

    A full working kitchen, wood-fired oven, indoor table for sixteen and a covered outdoor table for twenty-four. Bring your own chef, or we'll introduce ours.

  • iv.

    Outdoor spaces

    A walled herb garden, a 14m saltwater pool, a shaded gathering circle under a single old plane tree, and a small chapel kept as a silent room.

  • v.

    Logistics

    Resident caretakers, daily housekeeping, fibre wifi throughout, blackout curtains, climate control, full PA system, and discreet 24-hour support.

— From past hosts

A few words from the
practitioners we trust.

We host roughly twenty cohorts a year. About two-thirds are returning hosts; the rest find us through word of mouth from those returning hosts. We are happy to introduce you to anyone below.

We had been searching for years for a place quiet enough to do real nervous-system work and warm enough that our group never wanted to leave their rooms in the morning. Olea is the first venue where both have been true.

Dr. Lena Marchetti Somatic practitioner · Milan

As a facilitator you spend half your energy worrying about logistics. Here I genuinely stopped worrying on the first day. The team holds everything below the line so you can stay above it with the group.

Yannis Petrakis Leadership coach · Athens

I have run writing residencies in five countries. None of them produced the kind of work my participants made at Olea. There is something about the light here, and about being held so well, that lets people drop a layer they didn't know they were holding.

Sophia Lindgren Author & residency host · Stockholm
— Where we are

Twenty minutes from Chania. A world away from anywhere.

Olea sits in the hills of the Apokoronas peninsula, above a quiet fishing village and below a goat path that leads up to the White Mountains. The old Venetian harbour of Chania is twenty minutes by car. The nearest neighbour is an olive press half a kilometre down the valley.

Mild from March to early November, the climate is gentle enough that we hold most teaching outside between April and October. Winter weeks (good for writing residencies and quiet retreats) are warm, low and very still.

Apokoronas CHANIA · CRETE · GR
40 min FROM CHQ AIRPORT
20 min FROM CHANIA OLD TOWN
Year-round BEST: APR – OCT
— Enquire

Bring your work here.

We're happy to begin with a short conversation — about your cohort, the rhythm of the week you have in mind, and whether the house is the right fit. We typically book six to twelve months ahead, but last-minute weeks do open up.

✉ hello@oleahouse.gr ☎ +30 28210 00000 ◐ @olea.house
The courtyard at the blue hour — when most of our cohorts gather.

We reply within two working days, in English, Greek, or French.