5 Days in Heraklion

Start where Heraklion starts its day, at the cafés around Lions Square, which locals just call ta Liontaria, the Lions, with a bougatsa. Heraklion's version is filo pastry wrapped around mizithra, a soft, slightly sour sheep's cheese, baked crisp and dusted with sugar and cinnamon, so it's sweet and salty at once. There's also a version with custard cream.

Two places have been making it here since 1922, and both were founded by refugees from Asia Minor. Kirkor was opened by an Armenian family, and Phyllosophies by Apostolos Salkintzis from Smyrna, whose grandson still runs it and whose balcony looks straight at the fountain. Try one at each and pick a side, like everybody in town does.

The Morosini Fountain, with its four stone lions, has been the city's meeting point since 1628, when the Venetian governor Francesco Morosini brought spring water 15 km from the mountains to fill it. Don't confuse him with the other Francesco Morosini, his younger relative, who surrendered the city to the Ottomans in 1669 and later blew up the Parthenon. From November 2026 into spring 2027, the fountain and the square are expected to be fenced off for restoration.

Around the square is what's left of Venetian Candia. The Loggia, built in 1626-28 as a club for the Venetian nobility, fell apart over the centuries and was rebuilt after World War II; it's now City Hall. St. Mark's Basilica of 1239, the Venetians' cathedral, became a mosque, then briefly a cinema, and now hosts art exhibitions. Walk down 25 Avgoustou Street towards the harbor, named after the day in 1898 when a riot killed hundreds of Christians, British soldiers and the British vice-consul. It pushed the Great Powers to expel the last Ottoman troops, and Crete joined Greece in 1913.

From the Lions, walk a block south into 1866 Street, the old market, named after the great Cretan revolt of that year. It's touristy in places, but it's also where the city buys its herbs, honey, cheese, olives and raki, and it's the easiest place to stock up on the things you'll eat for the next five days. Look for dittany, the Cretan mountain herb that locals call erontas, and taste a few cheeses: graviera, mizithra and anthotyro.

At the top of the street is Kornarou Square, named after Vitsentzos Kornaros, the Cretan poet of the Erotokritos, the epic every Cretan grandparent can quote. Its Bembo fountain, from 1552-54, was the first to bring spring water into the city and is decorated with a headless Roman statue. The little Ottoman fountain house next to it is now a café.

Then head back past the Lions and halfway down 25 Avgoustou to the church of Agios Titos, which tells the city's history in one building. It began as a Byzantine church dedicated to Titus, the first bishop of Crete, became a Venetian cathedral, then a mosque, was rebuilt as a mosque after an earthquake in 1856, and returned to the Orthodox church in 1925. Inside, in a silver reliquary, is the saint's skull. The Venetians took it with them when they left in 1669, and Venice gave it back in 1966.

A few minutes west is the cathedral of Agios Minas, the patron saint of the city, begun in 1862 and finished in 1895 after the 1866 revolt stopped the work for years. It's the biggest church on Crete, and on 11 November, his feast day, the whole city turns out for the procession.

In the same square, the small 16th-century church of Agia Aikaterini of Sinai, once a mosque, is now a museum of Christian art, and its stars are six icons by Michael Damaskinos, the greatest Cretan painter of his time, from the 1580s.

Walk down to the seafront for the Historical Museum of Crete, which picks up where the Minoans leave off. It holds the only two paintings by El Greco on Crete: the View of Mount Sinai and the Baptism of Christ, both painted around 1567-70, before Domenikos Theotokopoulos, born in Candia in 1541, left for Venice and then Spain. There's a model of Venetian Candia, rooms on the revolts against the Ottomans and on World War II, and the study and library of the writer Nikos Kazantzakis, moved here from his home in Antibes.

The old wing is the 1903 house of the Kalokairinos family, built where the British vice-consul's house was burned in the riot of 1898, with him and his family inside. His brother Minos was the first man to dig at Knossos, which you'll see tomorrow.

Late in the afternoon, walk out along the old harbor past the arched Venetian arsenals, where galleys were built and repaired, to Koules, the fortress the Venetians called Rocca al Mare, built in 1523-40 to guard the harbor mouth. Inside, the vaulted halls show how a fortress worked, and the roof has the best view of the city and the sea.

Then do what everyone in Heraklion does in the evening and keep walking along the breakwater, past the fishermen, to watch the sun go down behind the mountains. It's the city's evening stroll, and it's free.

For dinner, stay by the water. Ligo Krasi Ligo Thalassa, "a little wine, a little sea", on Anglon Square at the harbor since 2006, does exactly what its name promises: grilled fish, octopus, fried small fish and Cretan wine. Order a carafe of the house white and a few plates to share, and when the meal is done, expect a small carafe of raki to arrive on the house. In Crete, that's how a meal ends.

City bus 2 runs from the port to Knossos every 15 minutes or so. The first palace here was built around 1900 BC, rebuilt after disasters, and it was the center of the Minoan world, Europe's first great civilization, until its final destruction around 1350 BC. Greek myth made it the palace of King Minos and the home of the Minotaur in the labyrinth, and the maze of rooms and corridors makes it easy to see why.

The first person to dig here was a local merchant, Minos Kalokairinos, in 1878. The famous excavation came later, from 1900, under the Englishman Arthur Evans, who then rebuilt parts of the palace in reinforced concrete and painted copies of the frescoes on the walls. Archaeologists have argued about his reconstructions ever since, and they're both the most criticized and the most photographed thing at the site. In 2025 Knossos and five other Minoan palaces became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Back in town, have lunch at Peskesi, in a restored old mansion near Agios Titos, which since the mid-2010s has led the revival of Cretan cooking with ingredients from its own farm. Try gamopilafo, the wedding pilaf cooked in meat broth and finished with staka butter, chochlioi boubouristoi, snails fried face down in olive oil and salt with vinegar and rosemary, and apaki, pork cured in vinegar and smoked over herbs. Book ahead, even for lunch.

The Heraklion Archaeological Museum holds the finest Minoan collection in the world, and after this morning it all falls into place. Here are the real frescoes from Knossos, including the bull-leapers somersaulting over a charging bull, the little faience Snake Goddesses with their arms raised, the bull's-head drinking vessel carved from black stone, the gold bee pendant from Malia and the painted sarcophagus from Agia Triada.

And here is the Phaistos Disc, a clay disc stamped on both sides with a spiral of symbols that nobody has been able to read since it was found in 1908. Neither can anyone read Linear A, the Minoans' own script, displayed nearby. Take your time upstairs, where the frescoes are, and come back to the disc at the end.

In the evening, walk ten minutes southwest of Agios Minas to Lakkos. From the early 1900s until around 1940 this was the city's red-light district and its rebetiko quarter, where musicians played the Greek blues in the hash dens and taverns. Today a group of artists is reviving its low houses and lanes with murals, among them a copy of an old photograph of 1930s rebetes. At its heart, Kafeneio O Lakkos sets its tables out on a little square full of flowers, and it's the right place to learn how Cretans drink raki, also called tsikoudia: in small glasses, slowly, with meze that keeps coming. On a cold night, ask for rakomelo, raki warmed with honey and spices. If you hear a lyra, the three-stringed Cretan fiddle, follow it: live Cretan music, with improvised rhyming couplets called mantinades, is the best thing a night in Heraklion can offer.

Gortyna was the capital of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica, which stretched across the sea to Libya, and its ruins are scattered for kilometers among the olive groves. The highlight is the Gortyn Code, a set of laws carved into a curved stone wall in the 5th century BC, about 600 lines covering marriage, divorce, inheritance and the rights of slaves. It's one of the longest ancient Greek inscriptions ever found, and it's written boustrophedon, "as the ox plows", one line left to right and the next right to left.

Next to it stands the 6th-century basilica of Agios Titos and a huge old plane tree, which, according to legend, is where Zeus, as a bull, brought Europa after carrying her off from Phoenicia. Their son was Minos.

Drive 15 minutes north into the foothills of Psiloritis to Zaros, a village famous for its spring water. By the little Votomos lake, the family taverna of the same name has been farming and grilling trout since the late 1970s, when the founder's father brought trout farming to the area. Eat it grilled with lemon and wild greens, and if you have time, walk the first stretch of the Rouvas gorge path from the lake.

Phaistos was the second great Minoan palace, and unlike Knossos, it was left unreconstructed, so you see it as the archaeologists found it: grand staircases, courtyards and storerooms on a ridge above the Messara plain. The setting is the real star. Behind it rises Psiloritis, Mount Ida, at 2,456 m the highest mountain in Crete, where Zeus was said to have been raised in a cave.

It's also where the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier found the Phaistos Disc in 1908, in a room on the northeast side of the palace. You saw the disc yesterday; this is where it waited 3,500 years.

End the day at Matala, a bay where the cliff is honeycombed with tombs carved into the soft rock in Greek and Roman times. In the 1960s and early 70s, hippies from all over the world moved into the caves, Joni Mitchell among them in 1970, who wrote her songs "Carey" and "California" there, until the Greek military government threw them out.

The caves are now a fenced archaeological site with a small ticket, the village is all cafés and painted walls, and the beach is lovely. Swim if it's warm, then find a table facing west for one of the best sunsets in Crete before the drive back.

Look south from Heraklion and the mountain on the horizon has the profile of a man lying on his back. Cretans say it's the face of Zeus, and ancient tradition put his tomb here, which scandalized other Greeks, who believed their god was immortal. The Minoans had a peak sanctuary on the summit, 811 m up, where they left offerings, and today a road climbs almost to the top, past the little church of Afentis Christos.

The view takes in the whole of central Crete: Heraklion and the sea to the north, Psiloritis to the west and the vineyards of Archanes right below.

At the foot of the mountain, Archanes is the best-kept village in this part of Crete: neoclassical houses painted in soft colors, a square full of cafés and vineyards on every side. It was also a Minoan town, and the cemetery at Fourni nearby was used for more than a thousand years. On the slope of Giouchtas, at Anemospilia, archaeologists found a small temple destroyed by an earthquake around 1700 BC with a young man's skeleton on an altar, and they argued that he had been sacrificed; others think the evidence doesn't hold up, and the debate is still open.

Archanes has a more recent story too. On the night of 26 April 1944, near the village, the British officers Patrick Leigh Fermor and Bill Stanley Moss and a band of Cretan resistance fighters stopped the car of General Heinrich Kreipe, commander of the German division holding eastern Crete, and kidnapped him. They hid him in the mountains for weeks and smuggled him to Egypt. Have lunch on the square: To Spitiko and Bakaliko are both good.

Ten minutes east, in the village of Myrtia, where his father's family came from, is the museum of Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ and the most famous Cretan writer of all. It covers his restless life, his travels and his books in dozens of languages, with photographs, manuscripts and theater costumes from his plays. It's a good introduction before you visit his grave tomorrow.

Finish in the vineyards. The hills around Peza, Archanes and Dafnes make most of Crete's wine, and they have their own protected appellations. The Lyrarakis family winery at Alagni, founded in 1966, is known for bringing back almost-lost Cretan grapes like Dafni and Plyto, as well as the island's star white, Vidiano. Tastings start at around 22 EUR and need booking.

On the way, stop at Vathypetro, 4 km south of Archanes, a Minoan country villa with one of the oldest wine presses in Europe, proof that this valley has made wine for 3,500 years. If you prefer reds, look for Liatiko, Kotsifali and Mandilari, the local red grapes, which the Douloufakis winery in Dafnes and the old Peza Union cooperative, founded in 1933, both make.

In an old power station on the seafront, the Natural History Museum of Crete is far better than its name suggests. It explains how this island was made, from the African and European plates grinding against each other to the dwarf elephants and hippos that once lived here, and its earthquake simulator, Enceladus, lets you feel what a real Cretan quake is like. Kids love it, and so do most adults.

City bus 6 takes you west to Ammoudara, Heraklion's long sandy beach, in about 20 minutes. It's lined with hotels and beach bars and is not the wildest beach in Crete, but the water is clean and, from June to October, warm enough to swim. Locals come here after work, and it's the right way to spend a last afternoon in a Mediterranean city.

The Venetian walls that wrap around the old town, with their seven bastions, held out against the Ottomans from 1648 to 1669, one of the longest sieges in history. Of the old gates, the Chania Gate in the west and the Jesus Gate in the south still stand. Start at the Jesus Gate and climb onto the ramparts: since 2024, a green path has run along the top from the Vitturi bastion west to the Martinengo bastion.

On the Martinengo bastion is the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, who died in Germany in 1957 and was buried here, on the walls of his city, looking out to the mountains. You'll often read that the church refused him a burial in a cemetery. That's a myth: he was never excommunicated, and the Archbishop of Crete led his funeral at Agios Minas. The plain stone carries the epitaph he chose: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." Stay for the sunset.

For the farewell dinner, book a table at Merastri, in a 1930 neoclassical house on Chrysostomou street, cooking Cretan food from a wood-fired oven since 1998. Start with dakos, a barley rusk softened under grated tomato, olive oil and crumbled mizithra, and kalitsounia, little cheese pies with mint, then whatever comes out of the oven. The raki at the end is on the house, and so is the advice to come back.