In browsing around online for weekly rentals in Greece (Peloponnese), I've come across several advertisements for "maisonettes", some detached and some described as semi-detached. Are these similar to apartments/flats, condos, ?

mini house

i should have said 'bungalow'

according to Wikipedia:
a single dwelling unit spread over two floors connected by an indoor staircase
(and NOT a single house which is small in size!)

A famous French restaurant in Cincinatti.

Sorry, I could not help myself.

I would define it as a two storey flat, but not sure how the Greeks would define it. I used to live in a maisonette when I was first married.

Thanks all, that is more info than I was coming up with since my work computer's internet is currently on the fritz (but Fodors is still coming through just fine, thank goodness ;-) ).

maisonnette a small house ,
a self-contained apartment (usually on two floors) in a larger house and with its own entrance from the outside

Hi mimi,

Thank you. Sounds like a structure similar to what we call townhomes in Denver. A large building with 2 to 4 self-contained units (usually 2-story). All of them have entrances from the outside.

That would be perfect for a vacation rental for us as there would be a lot more privacy and quiet than in a hotel (well, theoretically at least!).

A maisonette is really a duplex - or triplex apartment - usually in a row of like attached duplexes or triplexes. Usually not so big as a town house in a US city (there may be only 1 or 2 rooms on each floor).

The main point about a maisonette is that the bottom floor of the property is not at street level - ie you have to go upstairs to get into it.

Where you get this type of place in the UK you generally have a one floor flat on the ground floor with the maisonette upstairs.

But don't confuse them with Tyneside flats in the Newcastle area where each flat has a separate entrance or Colony flats in Edinburgh where the entrance to the upstairs flat is in a different street to the entrance to the lower flat.

Then there's Hebden Bridge where you get a terrace house on one street with another terrace house on to of it but whose entrance is in another street, but both entrances are at street level.

Maisonette is almost a technical term in British English for a flat with its own street entrace, usually not on the ground floor. In British it's usually part of a larger development, either from scratch or as conversion of properties like mews: a maisonette over what was a stable and is now a garage is quite widespread in the tonier parts of central London: but "maisonette" has naff overtones in British, so a mews maisonette would always be described as a "mews cottage"

The Greeks have half borrowed the term as "mezoneta"

"Mezoneta" doesn't have the downmarket connotations it has in British, and doesn't necessarily have quite the same meaning as in British. It's often used to refer to complexes of flats with semi-independent entrances but also to a one-off multstorey place with an independent entrance over a shop.

In other words, it's imprecise. Read the details VERY carefully, and assume it's a spec-built tourist development in a complex of hundreds or over a village boozer which stays open till 4 am

In French, a maisonette is a tiny house.

And keep in mind that the landlord in Greece may be French.

Or that they are writing for UK visitors