The Feast of Saint Minas
On 11 November Heraklion keeps the feast of Saint Minas, its patron, at the metropolitan cathedral that bears his name — one of the largest churches in Greece, consecrated in 1895. The city treats the day as a public holiday, with festal liturgy and the procession of the saint's icon through the streets.
On 11 November Heraklion keeps the feast of Saint Minas, its patron, at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Minas — begun in 1862 to plans by the Epirote architect Athanasios Mousis and inaugurated in 1895. The cathedral ranks among the largest churches in Greece. The day is a public holiday for the city.
The observance follows a settled order: festal Divine Liturgy and doxology, attended by the Church, the Armed Forces and the city’s civic authorities, then the procession of the saint’s icon through the streets of Heraklion. Tradition holds that at Easter 1826, under Ottoman rule, an officer on horseback — taken by the faithful to be Saint Minas himself — scattered a mob threatening Christians gathered for the Resurrection service. The 2026 feast falls two hundred years after that event, a bicentenary the Holy Archdiocese of Crete has marked throughout the year.