Four days in Crete: the middle of an island that behaves like a country

The Venetian centre on the first evening, the Minoan palace and the museum that explains it, and a day out west to a monastery and a sea fortress.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Heraklion
Places
9 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Crete is a country that happens to belong to Greece. It is 250 kilometres end to end, with mountains over two thousand metres down the middle, its own dialect, its own music and a long habit of not doing what Athens says. Four days does not cover it, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling a coach tour.

What four days does cover, properly, is the middle: Heraklion, the palace at Knossos twenty minutes from it, the museum that holds everything dug out of the island, and a day west along the coast. That is the archaeological half of Crete, and it is the half most people come for the first time.

The west, Chania and the white mountains and the gorges, is a separate trip with its own airport, and trying to bolt it on turns a holiday into six hours of driving. Come back for it.

Highlights

  • Knossos: 1,300 rooms, four thousand years old, and a reconstruction argument that has been running for a century
  • The Snake Goddess, the bull-leaping fresco and the Phaistos disc, all in one building in the middle of Heraklion
  • A monastery in the hills where the defenders blew themselves up rather than surrender in 1866
  • Rethymno's old town, the best preserved Venetian and Ottoman streetscape on the island

Where to stay

Heraklion, three nights

Heraklion is not a beautiful city and it does not much care. It was bombed flat in 1941, rebuilt in concrete, and the Venetian monuments that survived stand in the middle of it: a fountain with lions in the main square, a marble loggia, a harbour fort, and four kilometres of walls you can still walk on top of.

It is worth understanding what those walls did. The Ottomans besieged this city for twenty one years, from 1648 until it fell in 1669, which is among the longest sieges in European history. The Venetians had been here since 1204 and left in 1669; the Ottomans left in 1898; Crete joined Greece in 1913. Everything you look at here was built by somebody who then lost it.

Day by day

Day 1 in Heraklion

The Venetian centre and the fort on the mole

Everything today is inside four hundred metres, which is convenient after a flight. Start in the square where the city meets, work down to the harbour, and be on the fortress wall when the light goes.

This is the compressed version of Heraklion's history: a Venetian water supply with lions on it, a Venetian merchants' clubhouse now used as the town hall, and the fort that was supposed to stop the Ottomans and eventually did not.

  1. 17:00

    Morosini Fountain

    Architecture

    Four lions from an older monument holding up a Venetian basin in the middle of the busiest square in the city, fed by an aqueduct dragged fifteen kilometres from the mountains in the 1620s. The cafes around it are where Heraklion sits.

  2. 17:30

    Loggia

    Architecture

    The arcaded meeting hall the Venetian nobility built for themselves in 1628, rebuilt from its own rubble after the war and now the town hall. Walk through the arches; nobody stops you.

  3. 18:15

    Koules

    Other

    The harbour fortress at the end of the mole, sixteenth century, with walls thick enough to shrug off a twenty one year siege. From the parapet you look out at the islet of Dia, where Cousteau's divers found the wrecks of the trade this city ran on.

  4. 20:30

    Dinner in the Lakkos lanes

    Eat

    Behind the market street, a quarter of narrow lanes covered in murals with small kafeneia in them. Order raki and let the mezedes arrive; this is where Heraklion eats rather than where it takes visitors.

With more time: The Venetian walls run four kilometres around the old city and you can walk long stretches of the top. On the southern bastion is the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, who wrote Zorba the Greek, under an epitaph about hoping for nothing and being free, with the whole city on one side and Mount Juktas on the other.

Day 2 in Heraklion

Knossos in the morning, the museum in the afternoon

A local merchant found the first stones in the 1870s; Arthur Evans bought the hill in 1900 and spent thirty years and a family fortune digging out a palace complex nobody knew existed, then rebuilding parts of it in reinforced concrete and painting them.

Archaeologists have argued about that ever since, and you should see it partly for the argument. What is certainly true is that a civilisation ran the eastern Mediterranean from here four thousand years ago, wrote in a script nobody has deciphered, and left no defensive walls at all.

Then come back into town for the museum, which has the originals of everything Knossos shows you copies of. Doing it in this order is the whole trick: the frescoes make sense once you have stood in the rooms they came out of.

  1. 08:30

    Palace of Knossos

    Historic

    Twenty minutes out of town on the number 2 bus. The site is compact and largely flat, with the throne room, the storage jars and the grand staircase in the first half hour and the rest a maze of foundations. The red columns and the bright frescoes are Evans's reconstructions rather than survivals, which is worth knowing before you photograph them.

  2. 12:00

    Lunch back in town

    Eat

    The bus drops you three minutes from the market street. Eat there rather than at the cafes by the site gate.

  3. 14:00

    Heraklion Archaeological Museum

    Historic

    Everything the island has produced, arranged in order: the faience snake goddesses, the bull-leaping fresco with the acrobat mid vault, the Phaistos disc and its 45 stamped signs that nobody can read, and case after case of seals cut smaller than a fingernail. Two hours minimum, and it is air conditioned.

With more time: If the Minoans have you, the museum of natural history down by the sea explains the island the palaces sat on, including a room that simulates an earthquake. If they have not, the Historical Museum covers everything that happened after them and is the better second stop.

Day 3 in Heraklion

West to Arkadi and Rethymno

One day out of the city, along the north coast and up into the hills. Coaches run to Rethymno hourly and take about ninety minutes, but the monastery inland needs a car or a taxi from Rethymno, and it is the reason to make the trip a whole day rather than half of one.

Arkadi is where the Cretan revolt of 1866 ended. Several hundred villagers and fighters took refuge in the monastery, the Ottoman army broke through the gate, and the defenders fired the powder magazine and destroyed everyone in the building including themselves. It became the story that made European opinion care about Crete.

Then down to Rethymno, which the Venetians built, the Ottomans added minarets to, and nobody has since knocked down.

  1. 10:00

    Arkadi Monastery

    Religious

    A monastery with a Venetian baroque church front, standing alone on a plateau in the foothills of Mount Ida twenty three kilometres inland. The blown out powder room is preserved as it was left on 8 November 1866, and there is a small museum and an ossuary. Monks still live here.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch in Rethymno old town

    Eat

    The lanes below the fortress, back from the old harbour, are full of tavernas, and unlike most old towns of this quality the prices have not gone completely mad.

  3. 14:30

    Fortezza of Rethymnon

    Historic

    The Venetian citadel on the headland above the town, a huge open enclosure of grass and low walls with an Ottoman mosque still standing in the middle of it, its dome intact. Half an hour to walk round, and the view runs along the whole coast.

  4. 16:15

    Rimondi Fountain

    Other

    A small Venetian fountain in the middle of the old town with three carved masks spouting water, put up by a governor in the 1620s and still running. Do not drink it.

With more time: South from Rethymno, the road climbs through a narrow gorge to the Libyan Sea and a monastery above a palm lined river mouth, which is a spectacular hour of driving each way if you have the car and the daylight. Otherwise stay for dinner in Rethymno; the last coach back to Heraklion is late enough.

Day 4 in Heraklion

The other museum, then out

Four thousand years covered yesterday, so give the last morning to everything since. The Historical Museum runs from Byzantium to the German airborne invasion of 1941 and is the clearest account of Crete you will find anywhere.

It also holds the only two paintings by El Greco on the island he was born on, which is a strange and slightly moving thing to see in a provincial museum.

  1. 09:30

    Historical Museum of Crete

    Culture

    Byzantine icons, Venetian carving, a reconstructed Cretan farmhouse interior, and a long, unsparing section on the 1941 invasion and the occupation that followed. Two small El Greco panels hang in a room of their own upstairs.

  2. 13:00

    Airport or ferry

    Travel

    The airport is a fifteen minute drive east on a flat rate taxi, or a city bus from the harbour road. The ferry terminal is a walk from the centre and the overnight boat to Piraeus leaves around nine.

With more time: With a later flight, the covered market on 1866 Street sells herbs, cheese, honey and raki, and the aquarium out along the coast road is a genuinely good one and easy with children.

Before you go

Where to stay

Inside the Venetian walls of Heraklion, between the harbour and the Morosini fountain. It is a working city rather than a resort, so rooms are cheaper than anywhere on the coast, everything on these four days starts within ten minutes' walk, and there are bars full of people who live here.

The beach resorts strung east along the coast, Hersonissos, Malia, Stalis, are what most package holidays book. They are fine for a week by the pool and a bad base for this trip, because every day starts with a bus into town.

If you would rather sleep somewhere prettier, Rethymno is an hour west and has an old town you can stay in, at the cost of an hour each way to Knossos.

Getting around

City buses cover Heraklion and Knossos, run often, and are cheaper if you buy at the machine rather than from the driver. Two free circular routes loop the centre. Intercity coaches along the north coast are modern, air conditioned and roughly hourly, and the bus station sits by the ferry terminal east of the centre.

A car is worth it for one day, not four. Everything in the city is walkable, Knossos is a city bus ride, and only the trip west genuinely benefits from your own wheels.

Walking in Heraklion needs attention. Pavements are narrow, usually parked on, and drivers treat crossings as advisory. Scooters use the pavement when the road is busy.

Getting there

Heraklion's airport is five kilometres east of the centre, with flights from Athens and Thessaloniki all year and charters from most of Europe between April and November. A flat rate taxi into town is cheap enough to be worth it with luggage, and buses run as well.

Ferries from Piraeus sail overnight, leaving around nine in the evening and docking around six the next morning, which saves a night's accommodation and is the traditional way to arrive. Boats also connect to Santorini and the Cyclades in summer, so the island slots neatly onto the end of an island hop.

Tickets and timing

A joint ticket covers Knossos and the archaeological museum and is worth having, since the two only make sense together: the palace has the architecture and the copies, the museum has the originals.

Go to Knossos at opening. It is exposed, it takes coach parties from the whole north coast, and by eleven in high summer the queue for the throne room is longer than the room.

Most museums here close on one weekday and shorten their hours out of season. Check before building a day around one.

Eating

Cretan cooking is the one Greek regional cuisine that has been studied as a diet: wild greens, olive oil in quantities that alarm visitors, barley rusks softened with tomato, snails, and cheeses that exist nowhere else. Raki, called tsikoudia here, arrives free at the end of the meal and refusing it is rude.

The best eating in Heraklion is around the market street and in the lanes of the Lakkos quarter behind it, where small kafeneia serve mezedes with drinks. The harbour front charges for the view.

The thing that stays with people is usually not the palace. It is the scale of the gap: a civilisation that ran this sea for centuries, left painted rooms and unreadable writing, and then stopped, with everything it made now sitting in twenty rooms in the middle of a noisy modern city.

Four days is enough to feel that, and to eat extremely well while doing it. The rest of the island keeps.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Crete?
Enough for one end of it. Heraklion, Knossos, the museum and a day west fill four days comfortably. Seeing Chania, the Samaria gorge and the south coast as well needs a week and preferably a second base, because the island is far bigger than the map suggests.
Should I stay in Heraklion or a beach resort?
Heraklion, for this trip. It is where the museums, the buses, the ferries and the good food are, and it is cheap because most visitors head straight past it to the coast. If you want a beach holiday with a day of sightseeing in it, reverse that and accept the commute.
Do I need to hire a car?
Only for the day going west, and even then a coach to Rethymno plus a taxi to the monastery works. Knossos is a city bus, the intercity coaches are good, and driving and parking in Heraklion is not a pleasure.
Is Knossos worth it given the reconstruction?
Yes, with your eyes open. Evans rebuilt sections in concrete and had the frescoes repainted, and some of what you see is his guess at what once stood there. It is still the largest Minoan site anywhere and the only one where you get any sense of scale. See the museum the same day and you can tell the two apart.
When should I go?
April to early June and September to October. Crete is warm well outside the usual season, the wildflowers in spring are extraordinary, and the sea is still swimmable in October. July and August are hot, expensive and full, and the archaeological sites have no shade.