Things to do in Rethymno

An old town that stayed whole

Rethymno has the most complete old town on Crete. Venetian doorways, Ottoman wooden balconies and a minaret over a former church stand in the same lane. The Rimondi fountain of 1626 still runs, three lion heads under Corinthian columns.

The Fortezza fills the headland above. The Venetians built it between 1573 and 1580, after a corsair raid burned the town. The walk round its walls takes an hour, with the sea on three sides.

Below it the old Venetian harbour is a half-circle of restaurants around a small lighthouse. East of the centre a sand beach runs for kilometres. It shelves gently and suits families.

Behind the town

Rethymno sits near the middle of the north coast, which is the practical argument for staying here. Chania is an hour west and Heraklion an hour east. The mountains begin immediately behind the houses.

• Arkadi — the monastery whose powder store was blown up during the Ottoman siege of 1866, twenty minutes inland.
• Margarites and Anogia — pottery in the first; in the second, shepherds, lyra music and a village burned by German troops in 1944.
• Lake Kournas — the only natural freshwater lake on the island, west along the coast.
• Preveli — a river gorge full of palms on the south coast, forty minutes over the pass.
• Plakias and Damnoni — the south-coast beaches people cross the mountains for.

Food is a serious reason to be here. Cooking classes work with what the villages actually make: graviera pressed in stone huts, wild greens, raki off a village still. Wine estates and olive mills fill the afternoons.

Practical

• Season. May to October, with the sea warmest in September. August is busy but never reaches the density of Chania.
• Wind. The north coast picks up an afternoon breeze in July and August. The south-coast beaches are calmer on those days.
• Driving. A car is close to essential, because the good things are inland or over the pass. Mountain roads are narrow and fuel stations thin out.
• Parking. The old town is a pedestrian maze. Park outside it and walk in.
• Prices. Harbour tables cost roughly double what the same food costs two streets inland.
• Term time. The university's humanities faculties are here, so in winter a student city runs underneath the resort.
• Arkadi. It is a working monastery, so cover shoulders and knees.