The Venetian doorways
Carved arches with coats of arms and dates in the lanes.
Lapplaender โ CC BY-SA 3.0 de ยท Bernard Gagnon โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท ruud.trygve@gmail.coโฆ โ CC BY 3.0 ยท michael clarke stuff โ CC BY-SA 2.0
An excellent practical choice for anyone touring Crete. The town sits **exactly midway** along the island: Chania an hour west, Heraklion an hour and a quarter east โ so you reach both ends on day trips without changing hotel. It is **cheaper and quieter than Chania** and handsomer than Heraklion, its old town is small enough to walk entirely, and it has a **long sandy beach** directly against the town โ which is rare. โ The one drawback: it is smaller, so the evening life and the range of restaurants are less varied than Chania's.
Four easy markers. **Carved stone doorways** with arches, columns, coats of arms and Latin dates = Venetian. **Projecting wooden oriels** over the street with latticed windows = Ottoman (added to give the women of the house privacy). **Minarets** are obvious, and most are attached to buildings that were **Venetian churches** converted into mosques. **Fountains and sebils** in the lanes are usually Ottoman. The pleasure is finding all four in one building: a Venetian door carved with the date 1600, an Ottoman wooden balcony above it, and an arcaded courtyard behind.
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**The best-preserved Renaissance town in Crete**, and quieter and smaller than Chania โ which is the point of it. Where the bombing of 1941 destroyed parts of Chania and the war reshaped Heraklion, Rethymno's old town largely survived. Walking its lanes you see **carved Venetian doorways** with coats of arms and dates, projecting wooden **Ottoman oriels** overhead, **minarets** rising between the roofs, and arcaded inner courtyards โ sometimes all in one building. The town was **Venetian** from 1204 to 1646 and then **Ottoman** until 1898, and that long span under both left a mixed fabric you don't see as clearly anywhere else on the island. At its heart are the **Rimondi Fountain** with its lion heads, the **Neratze Mosque** with its tall minaret (once a Venetian church), the Venetian **Loggia**, and lanes ending at a small **Venetian harbour** with an Egyptian-built lighthouse on its tip โ with the **Fortezza** standing over all of it. โ The town is **small**: you cross it on foot in half an hour, but it deserves a day.
Carved arches with coats of arms and dates in the lanes.
A visible Ottoman layer over a Venetian fabric.
A Venetian port with an Egyptian-built lighthouse.
Old Town, 74100 Rethymno, Crete