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The massive fortress that dominates Rethymno’s harbour was built by the Venetians with sloping walls to better deflect the Ottoman Empire’s gigantic cannon. But it proved no match for the military ingenuity of the Turks, and fell after a short siege. Ironically, it became a far more successful stronghold for the Turkish Ottomans (see Rethymno).

The Venetians built this romantic coastal fortress to defend the south coast from Saracen pirates. In 1821 it was occupied by a small force of Cretan rebels, holding out against a vastly greater Turkish army. The rebels were defeated of course, but, according to legend, once a year their ghosts appear from the sea to reclaim the ruined castle (see The Drossoulites of Frangokastello & Frangokastello).

Frangokastello

A formidable island fortress built in 1579 to command the entrance to the Gulf of Mirabello. Venice managed to hang on to it even after the surrender of Candia (Irakleio) in 1669, and gave it up only by treaty in 1715. After Turkish withdrawal, it was used for a time as a leper colony (see Spinalonga).

The Venetians lost Chania to their arch-rivals, the Genoese, in 1263. They regained it 22 years later, and set about making the town impregnable, starting with walls around the hill above the harbour in the district still known as Kastelli (the castle). Further walls followed, but though they may have deterred occasional pirate raids, they proved ineffective when the Turks assailed the city in 1645.

Kastel Selinou, as Paleochora was first known, was built in 1279 to guard the southwest against pirates. The great Turkish corsair Barbarossa destroyed it in 1539. The Turks saw no need to rebuild it, and it has remained an elegant ruin ever since.

On a hilltop above Paleokastro, a Venetian keep shares the peak with the ruins of the Hellenistic city of Polyrinia, which thrived until the Saracen invasion of the 9th century. Stone from Hellenistic buildings, already 1,000 years old when the Venetians arrived, seems to have been incorporated into the castle walls.

Climb the bastions of the Aptera Fort, on a hilltop near the ruins of Byzantine Aptera for sweeping views. Below, across the coastal highway, is the grim Itzedin Fort, now a prison and closed to visitors.

Though much overgrown, the dilapidated walls standing among orange and lemon trees are still impressive. The castle was the scene of a famous massacre, when the Cretan rebel leader Georgios Kandanoleon was betrayed by Francesco Molini during his wedding to Molini’s daughter.

Siteia’s restored Venetian fort is used as an open-air theatre for concerts and plays in summer. The fortress is all that remains of the city’s once substantial ring of battlements which resisted a three-year siege by the Turks in 1648–51.

The lonely tower standing on a headland between Loutro and the bay of Finix, is yet another Venetian relic. Nearby are a few scattered blocks, the remains of a Byzantine church and also a Hellenistic town, the latter an important seaport when the Romans ruled Crete.