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.
Cretan music never stayed in the past. It's heard at feasts, festivals and weddings today, with the same lyre and the same couplets sung centuries ago, and it has given Greece some of its most important artists.
Music & Dance
Traditional song forms such as rizitika and mandinades are accompanied by the Cretan lyre and lute. Dances include the pentozalis (traditionally danced by men), the chaniotikos (sirtos), and the faster maleviziotikos, sousta and sitiakos.
Mantinades
Improvised rhyming fifteen-syllable couplets, sung at weddings, feasts and everyday life. It's the very same verse form Vitsentzos Kornaros used in Erotokritos four centuries earlier.
Heraklion's Garden Theatres
Two open-air theatres stand side by side, built into the moat of the Venetian fortifications near the Gate of Jesus, each named for a celebrated Heraklion artist. The large Nikos Kazantzakis Garden Theatre (about 1,100 seats) was first used informally during the WWII German occupation and took its current form in 1976. Behind it, the smaller Manos Hatzidakis Garden Theatre (400 seats) was built in 1980 at the composer's own suggestion, designed by Dionysis Fotopoulos as a demountable structure so as not to damage the protected walls. Both still host concerts and cultural events every summer.
Nikos Xylouris
Singer and Cretan lyra player, also known as "Psaronikos." Born in Anogeia, a village on the slopes of Mount Ida, and raised alongside two equally celebrated musician brothers, Psarantonis and Psarogiannis. He got his first lyra at twelve, and at seventeen moved to Heraklion, where he performed at the "Kastron" venue. He recorded his first record in 1958, despite the record label's initial doubts about the commercial prospects of Cretan music. He blended traditional Cretan music with éntekhno song and is remembered as one of Crete's most important voices. He died in Piraeus in 1980, aged just 43.
Manos Hatzidakis
Composer, one of the most important figures in the history of Greek music. His father's family came from the village of Myrthios, in Agios Vasileios, Rethymno, Crete. Alongside Mikis Theodorakis, he's regarded as a defining voice of "éntekhno" song, and he founded the Orchestra of Colours. In 1960 he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Never on Sunday," but refused to accept it because he felt the film misrepresented Athens.