Gateway to Minoan civilization — Knossos, Venetian harbours, and Cretan dakos salad
Heraklion is the capital of Crete and the largest city in Greece after Athens, Thessaloniki, and Piraeus — a Venetian harbour city with 16th-century walls still encircling the historic centre, and the jumping-off point for the 3,700-year-old Minoan palace of Knossos, the most advanced Bronze Age civilisation in Europe. Cretan food is a UNESCO-recognised culinary tradition: dakos (barley rusk topped with tomato, olive oil, and mizithra cheese), lamb with stamnagathi (mountain greens), fresh octopus, and the robust Cretan wines produced from ancient Kotsifali grape varieties.
Heraklion was settled in Minoan times, rebuilt as a Saracen pirate base (known as Rabdh el Khandak) in the 9th century, retaken by Byzantine forces, and then ruled by Venice from 1204 to 1669 — the longest Venetian colonial presence anywhere in the Mediterranean. The Venetians built the massive Koules fortress at the harbour mouth, the Loggia, and the grand system of walls that still stands. After 21 years of siege, the Ottomans took the city in 1669; the Greeks retook it in 1913. The Palace of Knossos, rediscovered by Arthur Evans in 1900, revealed that Europe's first advanced urban civilisa…