Chandras: vineyards and the legacy of Venice

Chandras: vineyards, springs and the legacy of Venice

Chandras (Χανδράς) lies at about 570 metres in a green hollow in the south-east of Lasithi, some 23 kilometres south of Sitia, on the plateau known after its two chief villages as “Armenochandrades” – Armeni and Chandras, which have by now more or less grown together. Vineyards, stone houses and narrow lanes make up the picture of a traditional Cretan village, in whose gardens stand apple, pear and walnut trees. Behind the calm of this landscape lies a dense history: Venetian manor houses survive, along with a stone fountain house, an Ottoman bath and the paths across to medieval Voila.

Its position explains the importance of the place. Chandras stands at the meeting point between Sitia, Ziros – four kilometres to the east, on a second, smaller plateau joined to this one by a narrow valley – Voila and the southern routes to Zakros. Water, wine and olive groves sustained the local economy, and the stone houses of the leading families recall the time when the surrounding country was parcelled out among Venetian fiefs. The name is usually derived from Arabic – “chandra” is said to mean “green” – and so the foundation is often placed in the years of Saracen rule. The village is securely attested from the 16th century: Francesco Barozzi records it in 1577 as “Ghandra”, and the Venetian census of 1583 lists “Candrà” with 403 inhabitants. In 1881 there were 458 Christians and 29 Muslims living here, in 2011 only 226 people.

A walk round the village: bath, churches and museum

In the middle of the village stand the remains of the Ottoman hammam, a small domed building with a furnace room, now partly incorporated into a private house. The church of the Dormition of the Virgin, a frescoed vaulted building of the 15th or 16th century, was given its second aisle only after 1960. The little chapel of St Dimitrios is already named in a list of churches of 1637 and, according to the inscription on the doorway, was restored in 1836. The church of St Charalambos, with its neoclassical bell tower, was built, according to oral tradition, between 1870 and 1890.

A small folklore museum, the Laografiko Mousio, has been set up in an old dwelling house near the main square. It aims not to display individual rarities but to gather the culture of everyday life: household goods, tools, weaving and the craft skills handed down in families – for the most part pieces from the late 19th century, given by the villagers themselves. Admission is free, and walkers following the E4 long-distance path from Chandras towards Zakros can conveniently look in on the way.

Windmills and the hill of Xykefalo

Windmills, the anemomyli, have survived in the neighbourhood. They recall a rural economy in which the wind helped to grind the corn and supply the farm. To these were added, in the early 20th century, the iron wind wheels with white sails familiar from the Lasithi Plateau; they pump groundwater for vineyards and fields, and whereas on Lasithi they have become largely a sight for visitors, here whitewashed metal wheels still turn to water the vines. The most recent layer of this landscape of wind is the wind farm above the village, which has been generating electricity since 2001: eighteen turbines with a combined output of 9.9 megawatts, on the windy ridge where the old mills once stood. On the hill of Xykefalo archaeologists discovered a Minoan settlement and a peak sanctuary. The spot shows that the history of Chandras begins long before Venice and the Ottoman period.

Voila and the Solomos family

About a kilometre from Chandras, on an isolated hill at the eastern edge of the plateau, lies the abandoned medieval village of Voila. It is often called a “ghost village”, but the phrase obscures the real history: there was once a fief here, and families lived in it who had a share in the administration of eastern Crete. The name probably goes back to a Byzantine dignitary called Voilas – the word could also simply mean a nobleman or landowner. In 1583 the place had 299 inhabitants; under the Ottomans it appears in the register of 1671 as “Vuyalo”; in 1875 there were still 25 Christians and 25 Muslims, before it was gradually given up towards the end of the 19th century and left finally deserted after the rising of 1897. Voila preserves Venetian houses, churches, two richly decorated Ottoman fountains with Turkish inscriptions and defensive buildings, is protected by the archaeological service, and is gradually being brought back into the cultural itineraries of the region.

Voila is associated with the Solomos family. On the highest point of the hill stands the double church of St George, to which a chapel of St John the Evangelist was later added. Above its doorway, worked in the Venetian manner, sits the coat of arms of the Salomon, and in the burial niche inside a fresco shows the Virgin enthroned with the Child, attended by angels, between the donors in the dress of their day, among them the patrician Georgios Salomon; the inscriptions give the years 1518 and 1560, and a funeral scene in monochrome is painted on the west wall. Branches of the family existed on Crete and in the Ionian Islands. With the celebrated poet Dionysios Solomos, author of the Greek national anthem, Cretan Voila is connected through the memory of the lineage – many scholars see his forebears in the Solomos of this place, and Chandras has named its main square after him – but he never lived here: he was born on Zakynthos in 1798, into a family of Cretan refugees who had settled there in 1670 after the Ottoman conquest of the island, wrote the Hymn to Liberty in 1823 and died on Corfu in 1857. The Cretan history of the family must not be confused with the biography of the poet.

The tower of Tzen Ali, Agios Panteleimon and Panteli

At Voila the fortified tower of Tzen Ali has survived. The three-storey building, with battered base, a stone string course running right round it and barrel-vaulted rooms, is assigned to the late Venetian period, the 16th or 17th century; under Ottoman rule it was altered and served as the residence of the commander of the janissaries after whom it is named. Tradition makes him a member of the Venetian noble family of Zeno, lords of the village, who had gone over to Islam, and remembers him as one of the harshest janissaries in the province of Sitia; when some five hundred insurgents marched on Voila in the rising of 1828 they found that the Turks had already left. The doorway bears Ottoman relief decoration with roses, axes and cypresses and a Turkish inscription of the year 1153 of the Hijra, that is AD 1740/41. Next to it are the ruins of the 16th-century church of St Panteleimon – a reminder of the Christian community that existed in this border country before and after the change of rulers.

North-west of Chandras, a little over two kilometres away in the locality of Panteli, stands the frescoed chapel of Christ the Lord, Afendis Christos. A Latin inscription is scratched into its wall: “Hic fuit Petro Abramo 1486” – Petro Abramo was here, 1486. Every year on 6 August the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord is celebrated here, and so the medieval graffito lives on in the church tradition of the village.

Chandras today

Chandras is best explored as part of a route across the Sitia plateau, which is served by asphalt roads throughout. From here the way can be continued to Voila, Etia – with its restored Venetian mansion of the De Mezzo family – Ziros and Zakros; a waymarked footpath of just under seven kilometres leads almost on the level by way of Voila to Ziros. Along the way Venetian manor houses, Ottoman fountains, Minoan sanctuaries and the living culture of the countryside can be set side by side. The village has not turned into a museum: in the kafenio on the square everyday life goes on, and the monuments remain part of a lived-in place where vineyards and old stones exist together.