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.
Crete sits at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, and it shows. Minoans, Mycenaeans, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians and Ottomans each left their mark on the island's language, architecture and customs. Here's the short version.
The first permanent settlers reached Crete by sea around 6500 BCE, long before anything comparable existed in the rest of Bronze Age Europe.
Named for the legendary King Minos, the Minoan civilisation built the great palaces of Knossos, Phaistos and Malia and traded across the eastern Mediterranean, Europe's first advanced civilisation. In 2025, Crete's Minoan Palatial Centres (Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zakros, Zominthos, Kydonia) were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
A major earthquake devastated Knossos around 1450 BCE, and power passed to Greek-speaking Mycenaeans from the mainland, who introduced Crete's first writing system, Linear B.
By the 5th century BCE Crete was known across Greece as a source of myths, legends and laws. It is home to the Gortyn Code, the oldest legal inscription in Europe. Rome completed its conquest of the island in 67 BCE.
Crete passed to the Byzantine Empire, briefly interrupted by Arab rule (824–961), keeping its Orthodox faith and Greek language throughout.
After the Fourth Crusade, Crusaders sold Crete to Venice, which folded it into its commercial empire as the Kingdom of Candia. Centuries of Venetian architecture, fortresses and trade followed. Much of what still stands in Heraklion's old town dates from this period.
The Ottoman Turks took Candia (modern Heraklion) after one of the longest sieges in history. Cretan identity endured, and uprisings, including in 1821 and 1866, kept the push for freedom alive.
After a massacre of Cretan and British civilians in Heraklion in 1898 forced the Great Powers to intervene, Crete became an autonomous state and finally united with Greece in 1913.
Your Wedding Backdrop: Heraklion's Old Town
Our ceremony takes place at Saint Titos Cathedral, right in the heart of the old town, a spot with far more history than it lets on. A few landmarks worth seeing nearby:
Saint Titos was a travelling companion of the Apostle Paul who preached in Crete and was martyred at Gortyn. The church was built as a cathedral in the second Byzantine period, became the Catholic archbishop's seat under Venetian rule, was ruined by fire in 1544, served as a mosque under Ottoman rule, and was rebuilt after the devastating 1856 earthquake. Saint Titos's skull was returned from Venice in 1956 and is kept here.
The Venetian "Rocca al Mare," known today by its Turkish name Koules, guards the old harbour. Heraklion's city walls are among the longest in Europe, and the fortress also served as a prison for Cretan rebels under successive occupiers.
An elegant 16th-century Venetian building where nobility once gathered. Today it houses part of Heraklion's town hall. It won the Europa Nostra prize in 1987 for the best-restored European monument of the year.
Heraklion's social heart. The decorated fountain was built by Venetian governor Francesco Morosini, fed by an aqueduct from Mount Youchtas, with its basin supported by four lions. Try a bougatsa (custard pastry) from one of the shops around it.
A market street named after the 1866 Cretan uprising, where locals still come daily for herbs, thyme honey, tsikoudia, cheese and fresh fish.