The scale
A dome, two towers and room for thousands — rare in Greece.
PawełMM — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Jebulon — CC0 · Bernard Gagnon — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jebulon — CC0
A school of icon painting that flourished in Crete in the **fifteenth and sixteenth centuries** under Venetian rule, combining the **Byzantine tradition** of icon painting with **Italian Renaissance** influences arriving through Venice — Byzantine forms with a new perspective, volume and realism. It produced major painters, chief among them **Michael Damaskinos** and **Theophanes the Cretan**, and by far the most famous, **Doménikos Theotokópoulos**, who trained in this school before leaving for Italy and Spain and becoming known as **El Greco**. Spain's greatest painter began as a Cretan icon painter.
**Both — they adjoin on the same square.** The cathedral is **free** and worth ten minutes for its scale and atmosphere, but it is relatively modern (nineteenth century) and not exceptional artistically. The small, older **church of Saint Catherine** is now an **icon museum** on a low-priced ticket, holding six Damaskinos icons and other Cretan school work — **the most important art in Heraklion after the Archaeological Museum**. If you must choose: Saint Catherine's.
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**One of the largest cathedrals in Greece**: a vast domed building with two towers holding eight thousand people, dominating the Agia Aikaterini square in Heraklion. It was built between **1862 and 1895**, while Crete was still under Ottoman rule, which is what makes it striking: raising an Orthodox cathedral on this scale required permission and particular political circumstances, and it came amid the late Ottoman reforms and the rising Cretan national movement. The building is a **political statement** as much as a church. The interior is wide, hung with icons and chandeliers, and holds work by **Michael Damaskinos**, the sixteenth-century Cretan icon painter who was a **contemporary of El Greco** in the same Cretan school. ⚠ Immediately beside it is the small, older **church of Saint Catherine**, now a museum of Cretan school icons — including six by Damaskinos, among the most important things in Heraklion. ⚠ The cathedral is **working**, and the seat of the archbishopric of Crete.
A dome, two towers and room for thousands — rare in Greece.
A contemporary of El Greco from the same Cretan school.
An adjoining icon museum that matters more artistically.
Agia Aikaterini Square, 71202 Heraklion