The best hotels always tell a good story, which explains why the new 43-room Xenodocheio Milos, in Athens, has become so popular.

Located on the edge of the city’s stylish and leafy Kolonaki district, this delicious new address is the result of an odyssey that began in 1966, when a penniless young Greek named Costas Spiliadis, from the port of Patras, moved to New York City to study criminology at New York University.