Through the eyes of... Athena McAlpine | Adam's Auctioneers

Through the eyes of Athena McAlpine, a charismatic, effortlessly elegant and naturally beautiful person who I am thrilled to also call a friend & who also owns my safe haven when I need to switch off from work @conventoculture has kindly taken the time to meet me @adams.auctioneers to chat about jewellery, style and her memories of Ireland where she loved growing up…
Athena McAlpine is an Irish born Greek, educated in England, who has lived and worked in Italy for the last 20 years.
A lot of her early childhood was spent in Dublin with her grandmother who lived in Kilteragh Pines, Foxrock. She remembers swimming in Sandy Cove, running around the gardens of Powerscourt, being taken to tea at the Glenview Hotel and learning to ride at Killegar Stables.
When people express surprise that her Greek grandparents chose to settle in Ireland after the war, she says it is not all that unusual, “The weather may be very different, otherwise there are plenty of similarities between the two cultures, after all the Greeks have Homer and the Irish have Joyce!”.
Athena now lives in the Basso Salento region of Puglia, Italy. Her home is the 500 year old Franciscan monastery, Il Convento di Santa Maria di Costantinopoli which she restored with her late husband Alistair McAlpine to house their collection of textiles, ethnography, tribal and folk art and which she runs as a Bed & Breakfast, welcoming guests from all over the world.
Hamish Bowles at American Vogue magazine described Il Convento as ‘a bed and breakfast establishment that redefines the genre’
Conde Nast Traveller magazine described Il Convento as ‘brimming with character, with museum-worth art lining the walls… Staying here is akin to visiting an old friend and the attention to detail is out of this world’
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