Discover Crete
History, culture, arts and food from the island we call home.
Crete isn't just the backdrop to our wedding. It's home. We live in Heraklion, on an island with thousands of years of history, its own dialect within the language, its own songs, and a cuisine studied around the world. What follows is a short, sourced tour for anyone who'd like to know a little more about the place before they visit.
Nikos Kazantzakis
Born in Heraklion while Crete was still under Ottoman rule. He studied law in Athens and philosophy in Paris under Henri Bergson. He regarded himself primarily as a poet. His magnum opus, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, runs to 33,333 verses. He's best known internationally for novels including Zorba the Greek, The Greek Passion, Report to Greco and The Last Temptation of Christ. His tomb sits on Heraklion's Venetian Walls, inscribed with the epitaph he chose himself: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." The Kazantzakis Museum is in Myrtia, his family's village.
Vitsentzos Kornaros
A poet and one of the leading figures of the Cretan Renaissance. Born in Trapezonda, Sitia, into a Venetian-Cretan family, he spent most of his life in Chandaka (present-day Heraklion), holding public office there. His masterpiece, Erotokritos (10,012 rhyming fifteen-syllable verses written in the Cretan dialect, in the same form as a mantinada), tells the love story of Erotokritos and Princess Aretousa across five parts: Love, Bravery, Ordeal, War, Redemption. It was immediately embraced by ordinary people as "a guide for life," and is still taught and performed today.
Domenikos Theotokopoulos (El Greco)
Born near Heraklion, in Fodele, next to the Byzantine Church of Panagia that inspired him. He trained in the Cretan School of Iconography in Venetian-era Candia, moved to Venice to study under Titian, and in 1577 settled in Toledo, Spain, where he became one of history's great painters, though his unconventional style repeatedly drew scrutiny from the Spanish Inquisition. He died in Toledo in 1614, never fulfilling his often-stated wish to revisit Crete.