Chania is the second largest city in Crete and was the island's capital from 1847 until 1971. It stands on the northwest coast, with the White Mountains rising behind it.
The city grew on top of Minoan Kydonia, and it has never stopped being lived in since. Its old town is a Venetian harbour with an Egyptian lighthouse at the entrance, an Ottoman mosque on the waterfront, a synagogue in a back lane, and Minoan foundations under the pavement.
Everything worth seeing in the town is within a twenty-minute walk. What lies beyond it — the gorges, the mountains and the famous beaches of the west — is covered in Exploring the Chania Area.
History & Culture
Kydonia
The low hill above the harbour is called Kastelli, and it was the centre of Minoan Kydonia. In the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC there was a palace here.
Clay tablets in both Linear A and Linear B have come out of the ground, and the name Kydonia appears on a Mycenaean tablet from Knossos. The most remarkable single find is a clay sealing of about 1450–1420 BC, known as the Master Impression: it shows a many-storeyed building on a coastal hill above a rocky harbour, with a young man standing on the highest roof. The landscape on it matches Kastelli.
The problem is that the ancient city lies under the modern one. Excavation happens in small plots, when a building comes down, and much of what is found has to be covered over again. There is no site to walk around.
The Venetian harbour
Venice held Chania for more than four centuries, and the harbour is what it left.
The lighthouse at the entrance was built around 1570. Egyptian troops rebuilt it in the 1830s, during a short period of Egyptian rule, which is why people call it the Egyptian lighthouse. The walk out along the breakwater takes about ten minutes and gives the best view back at the town.
Along the eastern side of the harbour stand the Neoria, long stone sheds with arched fronts where Venetian warships were repaired. There were twenty-three of them; several survive, and the largest, the Grand Arsenal, is now a cultural centre.
At the western entrance is the Firkas Fortress, which houses the Maritime Museum.
The Ottoman and Jewish town
The Küçük Hasan Mosque sits directly on the waterfront, with its wide dome. It was built in 1645, the year the Ottomans took the city, and it is the oldest surviving Ottoman building on Crete. It stopped being a mosque in 1923 and now holds exhibitions.
Behind the harbour, the streets between Zampeliou, Portou and Halidon were the Jewish quarter. On Kondylaki Street stands Etz Hayyim, the only synagogue left on Crete, in a building that was a fourteenth-century Venetian church and later a mosque. It was restored in the 1990s and is used again. Inside there is a memorial to the community of Chania, which was deported in 1944; the ship carrying them was sunk at sea and nobody came back. Entry is free and it is open in the mornings.
Splantzia, east of the harbour, was the Turkish quarter and is now the quietest and most lived-in part of the old town. Its church of Agios Nikolaos has a bell tower on one side and a minaret on the other.
The museums
The Archaeological Museum moved in 2022 to a new building in Halepa, the nineteenth-century diplomatic quarter east of the centre. It holds around 3,500 objects covering the whole regional unit, from the Neolithic to Roman times.
Halepa is also where Eleftherios Venizelos lived, and his house is open.
In the old town, the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Collection is in a fifteenth-century Venetian church, and the Maritime Museum is in the Firkas Fortress.
Beaches
The beaches described in most guides to Chania are an hour away by car. These are the ones you can use from the town itself.
Nea Chora is the city beach, about a kilometre west of the old harbour and fifteen minutes on foot. It is sandy, organised, busy in summer, and lined with fish tavernas. It is not one of Crete's great beaches, but it lets you combine the town with a swim.
Further west, a flat coastal path runs out to a series of small bays. Chrysi Akti, three kilometres out, is sandy and fully organised. Agioi Apostoloi, five kilometres out, is a small peninsula with three sheltered coves and a pine park behind them, and the water is shallow and warm early in the season. Both are reached by city bus, or by walking the coastal path in about an hour.
East of the old town, outside the Venetian walls, Koum Kapi is a small coastal neighbourhood with cafés along the water. People swim there, but it is mostly a place to sit.
Food & Drink
The dish that belongs to this city is boureki: layers of sliced courgette and potato with mint and a soft local cheese, baked. It appears across Crete but it is Chaniot, and it is traditionally made in the middle of August.
Beyond it, the Cretan repertoire. Dakos is barley rusk with tomato and mizithra. Apaki is pork cured and smoked over aromatic wood. Gamopilafo, the wedding rice cooked in goat broth, and staka with eggs turn up on most menus. Kalitsounia here are usually the sweet kind, small cheese pastries with honey. Snails are a delicacy, not a novelty.
The Municipal Market opened in 1913 in a cross-shaped covered hall in the centre of the city. It is where to look for graviera, mizithra, herbs, honey and raki, and it is worth walking through for the building alone.
Mornings start with bougatsa — here a warm cheese pastry, not the sweet Thessalonian version — cut up in a tin dish.
Raki arrives at the end of the meal without being ordered and without being charged.
Where to Stay
Prices shown per night for a sample 3-night stay. Rates and availability vary by season — select your dates for live pricing.
Practical information
Getting there
Chania International Airport is on the Akrotiri peninsula, about 14 km from the city, with flights from Athens all year and direct European flights in summer. A bus connects it with the KTEL station in town.
Ferries dock at Souda, 6–7 km east. The only route is Piraeus, overnight, about nine hours, leaving around nine or ten in the evening and arriving early in the morning. Buses meet the ferries.
There are no ferries from Chania to the Cyclades. For those you travel to Heraklion, about an hour and a half east by car. A second port, Kissamos, 41 km west, serves Kythira, Antikythira and Gythio.
Getting around
The old town is entirely walkable and largely closed to cars — everything in it is within twenty minutes on foot. Blue city buses cover the town, Souda, Akrotiri and the nearby beaches, starting from near the market. Green KTEL buses, from the station beside the old market, go to the rest of the regional unit. Do not try to drive into the old town. Parking is outside it, and it fills up in the evenings.
When to go
May, June, September and October are the best months: the sea is warm, the old town is walkable in the middle of the day, and there is room in the restaurants. July and August are hot and very busy. Winter is mild and wet, and the town keeps working — Chania is a real city, not a resort, so it does not close.
Good to know
The old town is cobbled and uneven, so wear shoes with grip. Restaurants directly on the harbour front charge for the view; the cooking is generally better one or two streets back, or in Splantzia. The synagogue is open mornings only and asks for a small donation. Check the current opening hours of the Archaeological Museum before going out to Halepa — it is a bus ride from the centre, not a walk.
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