A Home at the End of the World

The designer Leda Athanasopoulou grew up with Patmos's religious prophecies in her ear. But it was her singular eye that spotted an abandoned 17th-century house and revealed its future.

- By CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN

The novelist and all-around Grecophile Lawrence Durrell once defined Greek islands as “places where different destinies can meet and intersect in the full isolation of time.

” That might sound like a lot of literary hot air, until you visit Patmos. Less than 40 miles from the Turkish coast, Patmos is hardly a traveler's idea of a daytrip (there’s no airport on the island, and a ferry from the mainland takes seven hours). Its most famous resident? St. John, who wrote the Book of Revelation while in exile at the end of the 1st century. And yet this seahorse-shaped Dodecanese conundrum, with its pine forests and ravishing pebble and sand beaches, has also proven a fertile stomping ground for the haute creative classes. Artist Teddy Millington-Drake, interior designer John Stefanidis, auctioneer and dealer Tobias Meyer, and patrons like Aga Khan and Prince Michael of Greece all called this island home.