This Interactive Art App Will Enhance Your Experience of Santorini

In May 2016, each room in the luxury boutique hotel Grace Santorini was outfitted with black and white photographs taken by award-winning photographer Yiorgos Kordakis. The minimalist series, titled Hephaestus & Calliste, exhibits Santorini’s arresting landscapes and world-famous architecture with what the hotel considers “an impressionistic ‘less is more’ style, avoiding the cliché blue and white to reveal Santorini’s raw beauty whilst leaving much to the imagination.”

With pristine white buildings perched on rugged terrain overlooking the Aegean Sea, it’s practically impossible to find an angle of Santorini that isn’t photogenic—not to mention an angle that hasn’t already been photographed. A tried and tested subject of professional and amateur photographers alike, the Grace Santorini sought out a means of exhibiting the island from a fresh perspective with a travel-friendly twist. The hotel subsequently cultivated ARt by Grace: an “elevated technology” by which guests can interact with the art in their rooms.

Free to download for iOS and Android, ARt by Grace uses image-recognition software that “unlock[s] video footage on location for each of the photographs, with narration by Yiorgos.” Simply capture a photograph on your screen, and learn about the location from an artist’s perspective. If you take a particular liking to an image, you can purchase it at the hotel.

Opened in 2008, the Grace Santorini is a member of luxury hotel group Grace Hotels. Grace has additional locations in Mykonos, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Panama City, and Argentina’s Calchaquí Valley, with new hotels soon to open in Marrakech, the lakefront Swiss village of St. Moritz, the Argentine town of Cañuelas, as well as new Greek locations in Kalamata and Kea.

ARt by Grace will be available at the Grace Santorini, Imerovigli, Thira 847 00, Greece through October 31, 2017.