Rethymno Old Town: Minarets, Fortezza and the Long City Beach

Rethymno is the city Chania fans pretend not to know about. It has the same recipe, a Venetian harbour, a fortress on a headland, lanes full of wooden balconies and carved doorways, but with fewer cruise passengers and a beach that starts at the edge of the old town and runs east for more than ten kilometres. Crete's third city is also its most complete: university students keep the bars honest in winter, and the old quarter is lived in rather than staged.

The old quarter

Start at the Porta Guora, the last surviving gate of the Venetian walls, and let the lanes pull you in. The Rimondi fountain still pours mountain water through three lion heads, the Neratze mosque keeps the tallest minaret in town, and half the houses carry both a Venetian stone lintel and an Ottoman timber balcony, four centuries of occupation stacked on one facade. The tiny Venetian harbour at the bottom is more photogenic than practical; fishing boats and a 17th century lighthouse share water barely deep enough for either. Eat one harbourside dinner for the setting, then move two streets back for the better kitchens around Vernardou street, where the old wood-oven bakeries still sell phyllo made by hand.

The Fortezza

The star-shaped fortress on Paleokastro hill went up between 1573 and 1580 after pirate raids flattened the town, and it promptly failed its only real test when the Ottomans took Rethymno in 1646. Today it is the best sunset platform on the north coast: ramparts, a domed mosque that began life as a cathedral, and views west along the coast towards the White Mountains. There is a modest entrance fee, and summer evenings often bring open-air concerts inside the walls. Check locally for the programme.

The beach and the day trips

The city beach needs no transport at all: sand begins by the marina and continues through Perivolia and Platanias towards Skaleta, backed by a promenade you can cycle. Loggerhead turtles nest along this stretch, so taped-off areas in summer are doing important work. Inland, the monastery of Arkadi, the most charged historical site on the island, sits 23 kilometres away; our Arkadi guide explains why every Cretan knows the date 1866. South over the mountains, Plakias and Preveli put the Libyan Sea within a 40 minute drive.

Getting here and getting away

Rethymno sits roughly midway along the north coast, about an hour from each airport, which makes it the most flexible base on Crete. A transfer from Chania Airport to Rethymno takes about 65 minutes on the national road, while the run from Heraklion Airport is similar in the other direction. From here you can plausibly do Samaria, Knossos, Elafonisi and the south coast as day trips without ever changing hotels, something neither airport city can claim.