10 Best Sights in Crete, Greece

Nestled in the shadow of the Ayios Minas cathedral is one of Crete's most attractive small churches, named for St. Katherine and built in 1555. The church now houses a museum of icons by Cretan artists, who often traveled to Venice to study with Italian Renaissance painters. Look for six icons by Michael Damaskinos, who worked in both Byzantine and Renaissance styles during the 16th century. Crete's most famous artist, Domenikos Theotocopoulos, better known as El Greco, studied at the monastery school attached to the church in the mid-16th century.

Lands at the northeast corner of the Akrotiri Peninsula, which extends into the sea from the east side of Chania, are the holdings of several monasteries, including Ayia Triada (Holy Trinity) or Tzagarolon, as it is also known. The olive groves that surround and finance the monastery yield excellent oils, and the shop is stocked with some of the island's finest. Ayia Triada is a delightful place, where you can visit the flower-filled cloisters and the ornately decorated chapel, which dates from the monastery's founding in 1611. Today, just a handful of monks remain.

This 13th-century church is named for Venice's patron saint, but, with its modern portico and narrow interior, it bears little resemblance to its grand namesake in Venice. Concerts and recitals are often staged in the afternoons.

This huge, lofty cathedral, dating from 1895, can hold up to 8,000 worshippers, but is most lively on November 11, when Heraklion celebrates the feast of Minas, a 4th-century Roman soldier-turned-Christian. Legend has it that on Easter Sunday 1826 a ghostly Minas reappeared on horseback and dispersed a Turkish mob ready to slay the city's Orthodox faithful. Curiously, few of Heraklion's inhabitants are named after Minas, which is unusual for a city's patron saint. The reason is that many years ago babies born out of wedlock were left on the steps of the church, and were named Minas by the clergy who took these children in and cared for them. Thus, the name Minas came to be associated with illegitimacy.

A chapel to the left of the entrance contains St. Tito's skull, set in a silver-and-gilt reliquary. Titus is credited with converting the islanders to Christianity in the 1st century AD on the instructions of St. Paul. Ayios Titos was founded in the 10th century, rebuilt as a mosque under Turkish rule in the 19th century, and rededicated as a church in the 1920s, when the minaret was removed.

This ancient landmark is tucked away in what was once the Jewish ghetto, a warren of narrow lanes known as Evraki, just off the harbor south of the Firka. The building was formerly the Venetian church of St. Catherine, became a synagogue under the Ottomans in the 16th century, and was sorely neglected and near collapse by the end of the 20th century. Venetian Gothic arches, a mikveh (ritual bath), tombs of three rabbis, and other architectural features have been beautifully restored and are a stirring memorial to Crete's once sizable Jewish population, obliterated during World War II; many Cretan Jews drowned when a British torpedo sank the ship carrying them toward Auschwitz in 1944.

This 16th-century, Venetian-era monastery on the north end of the Akrotiri Peninsula is said to be one of the oldest and largest remaining religious communities on Crete. Delightful frescoes cover the wall of the courtyard chapel, while a path leads down the flanks of a seaside ravine past several caves used as hermitages and churches to the remote, 11th-century Katholiko, the monastery of St. John the Hermit, who pursued his solitary life in a nearby cave. Follow the path down to the sea along a riverbank for another mile or so to a secluded cove that is the perfect place for a refreshing dip. The return walk requires a steep uphill climb.

Kastelli Hill creates a backdrop to the Janissaries Mosque, the oldest Ottoman building in Crete, built at the water's edge when Turks captured the town in 1645 after a two-month siege. Its back courtyard, once home to a garden of palm trees, and its minaret were both bombed and destroyed during the Nazi occupation. You can enter the building only when the town uses it to host temporary art and trade exhibitions, but the presence of the domed structure at the edge of the shimmering sea lends Chania part of its exotic aura.

One of Heraklion's oldest monuments, dating from the 13th century, has been been rebuilt many times over the years and has done duty as a church, monastery, mosque, and movie theater. St. Peter's is now an exhibition hall and its 15th-century frescoes, the oldest in the city, have been beautifully restored.

The most visible sign of the Turkish occupation of Rethymnon is the graceful minaret, one of the few to survive in Greece, that rises above the Neratze. This large stone structure looming over the narrow lanes of the city center was a monastery, then church, under the Venetians, and was subsequently converted to a mosque under the Ottomans before being transformed into today's concert hall.