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The largest museum in Crete, and well worth visiting. Its collection is currently being reorganized, modernized and expanded (see Irakleio Archaeological Museum).

Housed in a historic building which was first a Venetian church then a Turkish mosque, the museum is packed with Minoan finds, Hellenistic and Roman marble sculpture, pottery and jewellery found at archaeological sites in western Crete.

The most important exhibits are from the palace site at Zakros, on Crete’s east coast, which was uncovered in 1961. They include clay tablets inscribed with the symbols of the Minoan Linear A script, as well as bronze tools and kitchen utensils.

In a converted bastion built by the Turks, the collection extends from the Stone Age to the Minoan and Hellenistic eras, with finds from archaeological sites, caves and cemeteries in the Rethymno region. Among the highlights are late Minoan burial caskets, or larnakes , and burial goods found in Minoan cemetery sites.

The fine collection of beautiful Cretan icons is the best reason to visit this small museum next to Chania’s harbour fortress. The collection spans 1,000 years of Byzantine history and sheds light on an often ignored chapter in Crete’s complex history.

A jug in the stylized shape of a female figure, found at the Bronze Age site at Korifi and known as the Goddess of Mirtos, is this museum’s proudest exhibit. Elsewhere are clay Minoan coffins decorated with paintings, good examples of Vasiliki pottery and some finely worked gold jewellery.

This 15th-century Venetian church – where both El Greco and the great icon painter Michailis Damaskinos are said to have learned their skills – contains the world’s best array of Cretan icons. The collection includes three superb works by Damaskinos.

Exhibits include huge clay storage jars (pithoi ), Minoan sarcophagi made of clay (larnakes ) statues, and bronze weapons and tools dating from the time of the Dorian city-states, when Ierapetra became one of the most powerful cities in eastern Crete.

Finds from the Minoan cemetery discovered at Fourni, just north of Archanes village, are displayed in the village’s small but rather good archaeological museum along with relics from other nearby sites.

Copies of paintings and biographical material relating to the life of the Cretan-born artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known as El Greco, are displayed in an extensively restored Venetian building in Fodele village, which is claimed to be his birthplace.