Arkadi Monastery: The Explosion That Made a Symbol

On 8 November 1866, with thousands of Ottoman troops breaching the walls of Arkadi Monastery, the defenders inside touched off the gunpowder magazine rather than surrender. Hundreds of people died in an instant, most of them women and children who had taken refuge there during the Cretan revolt. The blast was heard across the island and, within weeks, across Europe: newspapers took up the story, Victor Hugo wrote in support of the Cretan cause, and Arkadi became the symbol of the island's long fight for union with Greece. Crete still marks the anniversary every November.

The siege

The 1866 uprising against Ottoman rule used Arkadi as a supply centre and meeting point, and by autumn the monastery sheltered around 940 people, the majority of them civilians from surrounding villages, alongside a few hundred armed defenders under the abbot Gabriel Marinakis. The Ottoman commander brought an army with artillery; the defenders refused terms. After two days of fighting the gate fell, and as the troops poured in, the powder store in the roofless room you can still visit was fired, by tradition at the hand of Kostis Giaboudakis. A handful survived. The event entered history as the Holocaust of Arkadi, and it pushed the Cretan question onto front pages from London to St Petersburg.

Visiting today

The surprise of Arkadi is its beauty. The church at the centre of the courtyard, built in 1587, has the finest Venetian Renaissance facade on Crete, all columns and curves in honey-coloured stone, photographed best in the low evening light. Around it run the monks' cells, the old refectory still scarred from the fighting, a small museum of relics and weapons, and the powder magazine left open to the sky. Outside the walls, an ossuary holds the skulls of the defenders. It remains a working monastery, so dress with shoulders and knees covered; there is a modest entrance fee and seasonal hours, best checked locally.

Getting there and making a day of it

The monastery sits about 23 kilometres southeast of Rethymno, a 30 minute drive up through olive groves and the villages of the foothills, and the transfer from Rethymno to Arkadi is the simplest way to do it without a hire car. Coming from the east, a direct run from Heraklion Airport makes Arkadi a strong first stop before checking in on the coast. Pair the visit with lunch in a hill village or with the old town itself, whose Venetian and Ottoman layers are covered in our Rethymno guide.

Give it more time than the coach parties do. An hour covers the buildings; a second hour, sitting in the courtyard once the groups leave, explains better than any plaque why this quiet place carries the weight it does.