Crete: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Heraklion is not a pretty town and it says so itself: it was bombed flat in 1941 and rebuilt in concrete in a hurry. But underneath that is Candia, the Venetian capital, and the thing worth knowing before you walk it is that this city held out against an Ottoman siege for twenty-one years — from 1648 to 1669, the longest siege in recorded history. The walls that did it are still standing, and everything inside them makes sense only against that fact. About two hours.

A short history of Crete

Crete was the birthplace of the Minoan civilisation, and by around 1900 BC palaces such as Knossos already stood here. After the Roman and Byzantine periods the Venetians ruled the island for almost 450 years, until the Ottomans took the city of Candia, today's Heraklion, in 1669 after a siege of 21 years. In the 19th century the Cretans rebelled again and again, and in 1913 the island was united with Greece. In May 1941 thousands of German paratroopers landed on it and captured it. In June 1944 the ship Tanais, which was carrying the Jews of Chania to deportation, sank, and almost the entire community perished with it.

The ten best sights in Crete

1
Heraklion
The island’s capital and not a pretty town — it is where the museums and the ferries are
2
Heraklion Archaeological Museum
20 euro, 12 reduced, free on the first and third Sunday November–March. Verified 10/2026
3
Knossos
20 euro, 10 reduced, and no longer sold together with the museum. Verified 10/2026
4
Koules Fortress
The Venetian sea fort at the harbour mouth, with 26 vaulted chambers on the ground floor
5
Morosini Fountain
The lions holding the basin are about three centuries older than the 1628 fountain
6
Venetian Loggia
The nobles’ club of the 1620s, and the city hall today
7
The Venetian walls
4.5 kilometres, seven bastions, and they held out for 21 years. Walkable on top
8
Historical Museum of Crete
It holds the only two El Greco paintings on the island — he was born here
9
Agios Minas Cathedral
One of the largest churches in Greece, finished in 1895 and holding 8,000 people
10
Natural History Museum of Crete
In a converted power station on the seafront, with an earthquake simulator

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Heraklion, and what the siege left

Koules Fortress · The Venetians rebuilt it between 1523 and 1540 after an earthquake, and the ground floor has twenty-six vaulted chambers — barracks, a bakery, a mill, a prison and water cisterns, so that the fort could hold out even if the city fell. Three of the outer walls carry the winged lion of Saint Mark in relief, and they face outwards to sea for the same reason a flag does.
Morosini Fountain · Finished in 1628 to bring running water into the city from fifteen kilometres away, and the four lions holding the basin are about three hundred years older than the fountain itself — they were taken from somewhere else and reused, which is why they do not match the rest of the carving. The Venetians built it in order to claim the city had water, which in a siege is the whole argument.
Venetian Loggia · The club of the Venetian nobility, rebuilt in the 1620s, where the colony’s men met to talk business and politics — and it is the city hall today, which is a neat continuity. It was almost completely destroyed and was reassembled in the 1960s from its own fallen stones, numbered where they lay.
1866 Street market · Named after the year of the Cretan revolt, and it is still a working market lane rather than a souvenir street: mountain herbs sold by weight, barrels of raki, graviera cut from the wheel, and knife-makers who engrave a line of a mantinada on the blade. The mantinada is a two-line rhymed couplet improvised on the spot, and the knife tradition is that yours carries one.
Agios Minas Cathedral · One of the largest churches in Greece, finished in 1895 and able to hold about eight thousand people — an enormous building for a town that then had barely twenty thousand inhabitants. That is the point of it: it was begun in 1862 under Ottoman rule, as a statement, and the small church beside it is the one the congregation actually used before.
Archaeological Museum · The best Minoan collection in the world, and the object to find is the Phaistos Disc: a fired clay disc stamped with two hundred and forty-one impressions of forty-five different signs, made with punches — which makes it, arguably, the earliest example of movable type. It has never been deciphered, and nobody is even certain it is writing. Twenty euro, verified 10/2026.

Chania, four empires deep

Chania is the town people fall in love with, and the reason is that nothing here was ever demolished — it was only converted. A Venetian arsenal became a maritime museum, a Venetian church became a mosque, a mosque became a concert hall. Chania was the capital of Crete from 1898 until 1971, which is why the administrative buildings are here and the bureaucracy left. Two hours, and the harbour is the end, not the start.

Municipal Market · Opened in 1913, the year Crete was formally united with Greece, and built as a cross with four equal arms on the model of the market at Marseille — one arm for fish, one for meat, one for greengrocers, one for dry goods, so that the smells stayed apart. It is the single clearest piece of evidence that Chania expected to be a capital.
Splantzia square · This was the Turkish quarter, and the plane tree in the middle of the square is the one local landmark nobody puts on a postcard: Cretans were hanged from it under Ottoman rule, and the tree is still there and still named for it. The church on the square was a mosque and before that a Dominican monastery — the same building, three times over.
Etz Hayyim Synagogue · The only working synagogue on Crete, in a converted Venetian church, and the history is specific and terrible: on the 20th of May 1944 the Germans rounded up the Jews of Chania, about two hundred and sixty-five people, and put them on the ship Tanais. Nine days later it was torpedoed by a British submarine that did not know who was aboard. Nobody survived. The building was reopened in 1999.
Maritime Museum and Firkas · The Firkas bastion at the harbour mouth is where the Greek flag was raised over Crete for the first time, on the 1st of December 1913, with the king present — Crete had been an autonomous state for fifteen years before that, with its own flag, stamps and currency. The museum inside has a full-scale reconstruction of a Minoan ship that was actually sailed to Athens in 2004.
Mosque of the Janissaries · The domed building on the harbour front was built in 1649, the year Chania fell, and it is the oldest Ottoman building on Crete. Its minaret was pulled down in the 1920s. It is an exhibition hall now and the dome inside is worth looking up at: it sits on four arches with no drum, which is a Byzantine solution used by an Ottoman architect.
Chania lighthouse · Walk out the mole to it — about ten minutes — and look back, because that is the view of the town. The lighthouse was rebuilt in the 1830s during the twelve years when Crete was ruled from Egypt by Muhammad Ali, and his engineers gave it the shape of a minaret. So the most photographed object in Chania is Venetian at the base, Egyptian above, and Greek only by accident of history.

Rethymno, the town between

Rethymno has the largest Renaissance old town left on Crete, and it survived for an unglamorous reason: it was never important enough to be fought over hard, and never big enough to be rebuilt. The Venetians fortified it after a corsair raid, the Ottomans added minarets and wooden balconies, and the twentieth century mostly left it alone. An hour and a half, and almost all of it is in the shade.

Rimondi Fountain · Built in 1626 by the Venetian rector whose name it carries, with three lion heads spouting into basins — and it is still the point everyone meets at, four hundred years later, because it is the only place in the lanes wide enough to stand in. The columns are Corinthian and were taken from an earlier building, which was standard practice here.
Neratze Mosque · It was the Venetian church of Santa Maria, became the Neratze mosque after 1646, and is the town’s concert hall and music conservatory today — so the same room has been used for Catholic mass, Muslim prayer and Cretan lyra, in that order. The minaret beside it is the tallest on Crete and you can climb it.
The old town lanes · Look up as you walk: the wooden enclosed balconies that overhang the lanes are Ottoman and are called sachnisia, and they exist because Ottoman law taxed the ground area of a house and not the air above it. Underneath them are Venetian stone doorframes with a family crest and a date — the two empires in the same wall, one above the other.
Rethymno Archaeological Museum · It is in the former Venetian church of Saint Francis, and the collection is local and mostly funerary — which is why it is more interesting than it sounds: the Late Minoan larnakes, the painted clay coffins, are decorated with octopuses and birds rather than with anything solemn, and nobody is quite sure why.
Venetian harbour · The small round harbour with the Egyptian lighthouse at its mouth was the whole reason the town existed, and it is also the town’s permanent problem: it silts up. The Venetians dredged it repeatedly and gave up, which is why the modern port had to be built further east, and why this one now holds nothing but fishing boats and restaurant tables.
Fortezza · Built between 1573 and 1580 after the corsair Uluç Ali sacked the town, and it was designed to hold the entire population inside it — which failed completely: when the Ottomans came in 1646 the people who sheltered here were taken with the fort. The domed building in the middle was the cathedral, then a mosque, and its dome is one of the largest in Greece.

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Getting to Crete and getting around

Heraklion Airport · 5 kilometres east of town and the busiest on Crete; Chania has the second one
Heraklion port · The overnight ferry from Piraeus docks here, about nine hours
Heraklion KTEL station · Two stations in town: this one serves the east and the south coast
Chania KTEL station · The west-coast hub, and the Samaria buses to Omalos leave from here before dawn
Souda bay · The port for Chania, 7 kilometres out; the Piraeus ferry lands here

Cheap eats in Crete

Crete has the most distinct food of any Greek island, and it is a mountain cuisine rather than a seafood one — the island fed itself from goats, barley, oil and wild greens, and the sea was where danger came from. Eat standing: dakos, a barley rusk soaked in grated tomato with mizithra cheese; kalitsounia, small cheese pies eaten with honey; bougatsa, which here is filled with mizithra and not custard; and tsikoudia, the clear spirit that is poured free at the end of a meal and is never refused. Two to twelve euro.

1866 Street market · Herbs by weight, raki from the barrel
Bougatsa counters · 2 to 4 euro, and gone by noon
Chania market fish side · Mornings; the hall shuts early afternoon
Sfakian pie · About 3 euro, and best in Sfakia itself
Antikristo lamb · Phone ahead; it cannot be made on arrival
Archanes village counters · Mezedes, not plates; a few euro each
Zaros trout · 8 to 14 euro, and the gorge walk starts here
Snails and wild greens · 4 to 8 euro, and ask what is in season

Museums in Crete

Crete is where European civilisation starts, and the sites are unusually spread out: four Minoan palaces in four corners, a Roman capital, a Dorian city, and a museum in Heraklion that holds nearly all the movable finds. One rule saves money and time — Knossos and the Heraklion museum are no longer sold on one ticket, and seeing them on the same day in that order is still the right way. Verified 10/2026.

Knossos · 20 euro, 10 reduced, sold separately from the museum
Heraklion Archaeological Museum · 20 euro, 12 reduced; free 1st and 3rd Sunday Nov–Mar
Phaistos · Quiet; no shade on the ridge
Gortyn · Free to see the code wall from the road
Historical Museum of Crete · Two hours, and the war floor is the strongest
Eleutherna museum · Half an hour from Rethymno; nearly empty
Lato · Free or near it; no facilities
Zakros · 130 kilometres east; a full day

Nature and day trips near Crete

Crete is 260 kilometres long with three mountain ranges down the middle, and that is the fact that organises everything: the north coast is where the roads and the towns are, the south coast is reached through gorges, and some villages down there still have no road at all. There are over four hundred gorges on the island. The two that matter to most visitors are Samaria and Imbros.

Samaria Gorge · Roughly May to mid-October; a gate fee at Xyloskalo. Verified 10/2026
Imbros Gorge · Downhill, 8 kilometres, and a bus back from the bottom
Balos lagoon · Check your car contract before the dirt track
Elafonisi · 145 kilometres from Heraklion; a very long day
Preveli palm gorge · A steep stair down to the beach, or a boat from Plakias
Psiloritis and the Nida plateau · A car to the plateau; the summit is a serious walk
Lasithi plateau · An hour from Heraklion; cool even in August
Vai · The far east, 95 kilometres past Agios Nikolaos
Kournas lake · Pedal boats; busy at midday in season

Holy places in Crete

On Crete a monastery is a fortress, and that is not a metaphor: through four centuries of Venetian and Ottoman rule the monasteries were the only Greek-run institutions left, and they held weapons, schools and refugees. Several of them have cannon. Two of them decided the island’s modern history.

Arkadi Monastery · 4 euro. The powder room is still roofless. Verified 10/2026
Toplou Monastery · Small entry fee; it also sells its own oil and wine
Preveli Monastery · Modest dress; the beach is a steep stair below
Agia Triada Monastery · It sells its own oil and wine at the gate
Kritsa church · Small fee; closes in the early afternoon
Dikteon Cave · Steep and wet steps; proper shoes

Things to do in Crete with kids

Natural History Museum · In a converted power station, with an earthquake simulator and a discovery floor
Koules Fortress · 26 chambers to walk through, and the roof is open
Kournas lake · Pedal boats, terrapins and shallow water
Georgioupoli beach · A long shallow beach with eucalyptus shade behind it
Spinalonga boat · The boat is half the attraction; 20 euro plus 10–12 for the crossing
Matala caves · Carved caves you can climb into, right above the beach
Agia Pelagia · A sheltered cove 20 kilometres from town, calm on windy days
Lasithi windmills · A flat plateau to walk on, and it is cool in August

Nightlife in Crete

Crete does not do island nightlife the way the Cyclades do. Heraklion has a real city night built around its own students and residents, Chania has courtyards and roof bars, and Malia has the loud strip that everything else on the island was deliberately kept away from. The Cretan night that actually matters, though, happens in a village with a lyra player and no sign outside.

Heraklion Eleftherias quarter · All year, and local prices
Chania harbour and Splantzia · The harbour is the expensive side; Splantzia is not
Malia strip · June to September only; nothing before midnight
Anogia lyra nights · Ask locally which night; it is not every night
Rethymno old town · One block in from the harbour
Raki after dinner · It comes free; refusing it is the rude part

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Frequently asked questions about Crete

What is there to see in Crete?

The top sights in Crete are Heraklion, Heraklion Archaeological Museum and Knossos. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Crete?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Crete without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Crete?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Crete, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Heraklion, and what the siege left.

How do you get to Crete and get around?

The main ways are Heraklion Airport, Heraklion port and Heraklion KTEL station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Crete, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Crete that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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