Rethymno
Rethymno is the most walkable of the Cretan towns and the right base for two nights between Chania and Heraklion. The old quarter is small enough to cross on foot in fifteen minutes, the Venetian and Ottoman layers are intermingled within a few blocks, and the long sandy beach starts where the old town ends. It is also the calmest of the three Cretan capitals: the harbour is too small for cruise ships, and the rhythm is set by the local university rather than by mass tourism.
The Fortezza, the largest Venetian fortress on Crete, was built in the 1570s on a sea-facing rock above the old town after two Ottoman attacks. It is a solid hour's walk around the ramparts, and worth the climb in the late afternoon when the light hits the eastern walls. Below, the Rimondi Fountain, dated 1626, has three lion-headed spouts still pouring into a small triangular square. The Neratze, a Venetian church converted into the central mosque under Ottoman rule and now a music conservatory, dominates the lower town with the only intact minaret left in the city.
The Arkadi monastery, twenty kilometres south-east of the town, holds the central Cretan resistance memory. In November 1866, during the uprising against Ottoman rule, around a thousand villagers and fighters who had taken refuge in the monastery ignited the powder magazine rather than surrender. The explosion shocked Europe and pushed Cretan independence onto the international agenda. The site is open to visitors and the small museum is one of the more affecting on the island.
A practical word. Stay inside the old town within walking distance of the Fortezza. Eat at the small tavernas in the back lanes rather than on the harbour or the beachfront. Two nights, three if you want to drive south to Plakias and the Libyan Sea beaches as well.
House Notes
Arrival
Rethymno has no airfield of its own — Chania (CHQ) is roughly 70 km west, Heraklion (HER) 80 km east, each a little over an hour by car. Helistar and Ariston Aviation both fly the Athens–Crete route by helicopter, around 90 minutes. Yacht guests berth at Marina Rethymno, east of the old town: 174 serviced berths, maximum vessel length 40 m, maximum draught 3.5 m. The Venetian harbour in the old town itself is too small and too shallow for anything beyond a tender.
The address
Avli, in the heart of the old town at Xanthoudidou 22 and Radamanthios, is the address. A cluster of renovated 16th-century Venetian dwellings around a single courtyard, ten suites, with a restaurant, wine cellar and traditional products shop sharing the property. Established in 1987 by Katerina Xekalou, who effectively founded the modern Cretan hospitality register. Request the upper-floor suites for the rooftop terrace and Fortezza horizon.
Veneto
Twelve suites inside a 15th-century Venetian mansion — once a Dominican monastery — at 2–4 Epimenidou Street, a few lanes back from the old harbour. The restaurant, open from May through October, holds the Agronutritional Cooperation of Crete's Cretan Cuisine certification and the Vinetum gold for its wine list. Meat from the nearby farms, fish from the Cretan sea, dishes built around recipes that pre-date the chain-hotel beachfront by several centuries.
Vidiano
Klados Winery, on the coast road east of the town toward Panormo, was founded in 1997 by Emmanuel Klados, a chemist-oenologist, and passed to his son Stelios in 2014. The estate vineyard has been certified organic since 2013, and Vidiano — the indigenous white variety that Cretan growers regard as the island flagship — is the one to follow here. Tastings of six or eight wines by arrangement; production runs to around 100,000 litres a year.
Preveli
After the Allied surrender on Crete in early June 1941, the Holy Monastery of Preveli, above the south coast, sheltered British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers cut off in the mountains. Abbot Agathangelos Lagouvardos organised the evacuations; a group of Australian soldiers were lifted by submarine off the beach below the monastery, and the Germans later destroyed the Lower Monastery in retaliation. The site is open and a small museum holds the documents.
The palm forest
Below the monastery, the Megalopotamos river runs out through Kourtaliotis Gorge to the sea, and the bank between gorge and beach carries a forest of Phoenix theophrasti, the Cretan date palm — a stand of several hundred. A fire in 2010 took much of the canopy; the grove has regenerated. Reach the beach by water from Plakias on the small boats that run through the season, or by the footpath from Drimiskiano Amoudi. There are no facilities and no umbrellas; the bay is protected.
Anogeia
On the northern slopes of Psiloritis at 750 metres, Anogeia was razed on the order of Generalleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller on 13 August 1944 — reprisal for the village's role in sheltering the resistance fighters who had kidnapped General Kreipe. Of 940 houses, none stood intact when the pillage ended in early September. The village rebuilt and became the centre of the Cretan lyra tradition: the Nikos Xylouris house at the main square, kept by his sister Zouboulia, is the one to ask after.
Margarites
In the Mylopotamos hills south-east of the town, Margarites is the pottery village of Crete — twenty active workshops within a few lanes. Giorgis Dalamvelas, born in the village in 1972, and his partner Mariniki Mania set up Keramion in 1997 in an old stone building near the square; they work the local clay with natural pigments from the mountains, polished with pebbles and decorated with a sheep's wool brush. The pieces ship.
Argyroupoli
Twenty-seven kilometres south-west, on the site of ancient Lappa, Argyroupoli sits where ten springs surface together under plane trees and provide some of Rethymno's drinking water. Palios Mylos, built around the stones of an old watermill, is the taverna to take in the lower village — trout raised in the spring channels, antikristo lamb prepared on the spit. Above the springs lie the limestone tombs of the ancient cemetery, set in the rock under the great plane tree.
The window
September is the month: the meltemi softens, sea temperatures hold at 24 to 26 degrees, the package week ebbs from the seafront and the south-coast roads to Plakias and Preveli empty. The Fortezza — the largest Venetian castle of its kind, raised between 1573 and 1580 to Sforza Pallavicini's bastioned plan above the old town — is best walked at the cooler end of the month, when the ramparts and the lanes below them have cleared of the high-summer crowd.