Chania
Chania is a Venetian harbour town that has not been preserved into a museum. It still lives. The shaded arcades around the inner basin run cafes and small ship chandlers; the lighthouse on the western mole has worked through its various restorations since the late sixteenth century; the Mosque of the Janissaries at the harbour's eastern end is the oldest Ottoman building on Crete and is now a low domed exhibition space. Behind the waterfront, the Splantzia quarter is the older Greek and Turkish residential maze, and Odos Skridlof off Halidon is still a working leather street.
Chania is the centre of resistance memory on the island. The Battle of Crete in May 1941, when German paratroopers landed at Maleme just west of the city, drew civilians armed with hunting rifles and farm tools onto the airfield alongside Allied troops; the resulting twelve-day fight was the costliest paratroop operation of the war for the German side. Eleftherios Venizelos, the statesman who shaped the borders of modern Greece, was born in nearby Mournies in 1864, and his tomb on the Akrotiri peninsula above the city is the right place to walk to at sunset.
The Samaria Gorge is the famous walk and the most underestimated. Start at the Omalos plateau, descend sixteen kilometres through cypress and pine to the village of Agia Roumeli on the Libyan Sea, then take the small ferry along the south coast to Sougia or Sfakia where a bus runs back over the mountains. Allow a long day: most guests start at six, finish in the early afternoon, and are not back in Chania until evening. The descent is harder on the knees than the brochures suggest. The gorge is closed in winter and after heavy rain.
Stay inside the old town, two or three nights, and book dinner in Splantzia rather than on the harbour, where the menus tend toward tourist pricing. The market hall on 1866 Square is the right lunch.
House Notes
Arrival
Helistar runs the Athens–Crete helicopter route in approximately ninety minutes, with the AS365 Dauphin, H135 and H120 in fleet; IFLY handles the same corridor and the inter-island hops from Mykonos and Santorini. For yacht guests, Souda is the deeper anchorage seven kilometres east of the old town — 1,470 metres of quay across four berths, vessels above 300 metres accepted, draught to twelve.
Casa Delfino
A 17th-century Venetian mansion on Theofanous Street in the walled old town, kept by the Markantonaki family across six generations — Margarita Markantonaki the sixth. Twenty-four suites only, a rooftop terrace looking onto the harbour and the lighthouse, a pebbled inner courtyard that is the quietest room in Chania.
Tamam
On Zampeliou Street in the old port, the building was raised by the Venetians around 1400 as a public bath, continued as an Ottoman hamam after the 1645 conquest, and has been a restaurant only since 1982. The kitchen runs Cretan with Ottoman and Eastern-Mediterranean inflections; the wine list is Cretan-weighted. Book the room set into the old bath rather than the terrace.
Salis
Akti Enoseos 3, on the Old Venetian Harbour — modern Cretan fine dining and the most serious cellar in town, holding the Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence since 2019 and a three-star accreditation from World Fine Wine. Open midday through midnight in season. Ask for a corner table on the harbour side and let the sommelier choose the by-the-glass progression.
Ntounias
In the mountain village of Drakona, about eighteen kilometres south of Chania and five hundred metres above the sea, Stelios Trilyrakis cooks his mother's and grandmother's recipes on wood fire only — no electrical appliances in the kitchen. Vegetables, eggs, dairy and meat come from the surrounding farm. The pace is slow by intention; lunch is the meal here, not dinner.
Vatolakkos
Manousakis Winery in the village of Vatolakkos, in the Platanias municipality west of Chania, planted Syrah, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Roussanne in 1993 at 350 metres — the Rhône varieties on Cretan terroir, organic from the outset. The first harvest of the Nostos brand came in 1997; the indigenous white Vidiano was added in 2010. Ted Manousakis chose the name for "the yearning to return to one's homeland".
The Firkas
The Maritime Museum of Crete sits at the entrance of the Firka fortress on Akti Kountourioti, the Venetian bastion that controlled the harbour mouth. Founded in 1973, the collection runs to around 2,500 items in chronological order — Bronze Age and Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, the Balkan Wars, the Second World War, the Battle of Crete. The signature piece is the reconstructed Minoan vessel Minoa, an experimental working copy of an ancient trader.
The 85th
The Battle of Crete commemorations run 17 through 24 May 2026 across the western prefecture. The principal services are at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery at Souda Bay — attended this year by Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, with a Red Arrows flypast — the German War Cemetery at Maleme, and the Greece–New Zealand Memorial at Galatas. The closing ceremony at Maleme aerodrome carries a parachute drop by the 1st Paratroopers' Wing.
Loutro
A small fishing village at Cape Mouri on the Libyan coast, seventy-one kilometres south of Chania, reachable only by boat or on foot — there are no cars. The ANENDYK ferry from Chora Sfakion crosses in fifteen to twenty minutes and serves Agia Roumeli, Sougia, Paleochora and Gavdos from the same quay. The best of the south coast resolves around a single afternoon spent walking the headland and returning by the late boat.
The window
Late May through late June, and the first three weeks of September. The Samaria National Park opens at seven in the morning every day from 1 May until 31 October — earlier or later and the gorge is closed entirely. July and August bring the cruise-ship doubling at Souda and crowds along the inner harbour by midday; the inland villages, the south-coast boats and the western wineries hold their pace in the shoulder weeks.