Armeni and Venetian Etia

A village with an Armenian name

Just two kilometres south of Chandras, at an altitude of about 550 metres and surrounded by well-watered gardens, orchards and vineyards, lies the village of Armeni (Αρμένοι). Roads fan out from it across the upland to Chandras, Etia and Papagiannades and on towards Agia Triada and the south coast, so that it is easily combined with the other villages of the Ziros–Chandras plateau. It owes its name to an Armenian contingent that came to the island in AD 961 with the army of the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros Phokas; according to another reading, the settlers were families from the Armeniac military district of Asia Minor, planted here once the Arabs had been driven out. A stream divides the village into two quarters, Pera Chorio to the east and Pode Chorio to the west. In the Venetian records it first appears in 1577, in Francesco Barozzi’s description of the island, as “Armenus”; the census of 1583 gives 428 inhabitants, five of them priests. In 1834 twenty Christian and eight Muslim families were living here, and by 1881 the 246 inhabitants were Christian to a man. The village grew again in the mid-20th century, when the last families of neighbouring Etia moved across in the 1950s; today it has about three hundred residents, a primary school and an old-fashioned general store at its centre.

Two basilicas, a mansion and a great many wind pumps

The village has two Byzantine basilicas, dedicated to St George and to the Dormition of the Virgin. Set among houses of Venetian build, these old churches give the place its particular charm. The church of the Dormition was burnt by the Turks in January 1829, when its wall paintings were lost, and was rebuilt before the 19th century was out. Agios Georgios has kept its Byzantine frescoes and so stands as a witness to earlier ages, although damp found its way in after the severe earthquake of 1856 and has taken its toll on them.

Worth seeing, too, is the Kornaros mansion, the handsome legacy of a celebrated Cretan family, the Venetian Cornaro; the family’s ties to the neighbourhood lasted long, and as late as 1808 an Emmanouil Kornaros presented a silver-bound Gospel book to the nearby monastery. Numerous wind pumps, which raise groundwater from the wells into the gardens, and abundant springs give the countryside its character. A hill near Armeni bears the name of the schoolmaster Stavros Aspradakis, a native of the village who lost his life during the German and Italian occupation.

The monastery of Agia Sofia

Not far from Armeni, a few minutes’ walk from the village along a dirt track, lies the Venetian-period monastery of Agia Sofia. It was founded in the 15th century, most probably between 1450 and 1500 – by the Cornaro family, tradition holds – and was once large and prosperous, laid out as a walled square in the manner of a small fortress. A stone at the main gate carries the date 1634, the year of a thorough renovation. Today it is deserted, but its church survives: a single-aisled, barrel-vaulted basilica built in two stages, the eastern part being the older, with a magnificently carved iconostasis of walnut and impressive icons. Among them are a Panagia Glykophilousa of the Cretan school, its colours still fresh, and an icon of 1770; the bullet holes in the screen are put down to Turkish raids. Some of the cells are still standing, and in one of them a finely worked stone fireplace comes as a surprise.

The cave church of the Holy Spirit

South-west of the monastery a farm track leads to a flight of forty steps, at the top of which is a cave with the church of the Holy Spirit (Agio Pnevma) built into it. It is one of two small chapels on the slope facing the monastery, and both probably began as the retreats of hermits. The little church, which originally belonged to the monastery, took its present form, local tradition says, towards the end of the 19th century, when a child with an eye complaint is said to have been healed here; an older building on the spot had presumably been destroyed in Turkish raids. Water seeps from the rock inside and is held to work cures, and it is also told that the basin in the cave fills in some mysterious way on the feast day. The feast is kept on Whit Monday, the Day of the Holy Spirit, fifty days after Easter, when the faithful of the whole plateau climb up to it. The unusual chapel, lately put in order by the people of Armeni, and the splendid view over the green valley of Chandras and out to the Libyan Sea leave a deep impression. Carry on up the steps and you come to a second church, just as curious.

Etia, the fief of the De Mezzo

Armeni adjoins Etia, about a kilometre to the north-west and some 22 kilometres south of Sitia, the family seat of the Venetian De Mezzo. The village, now all but abandoned, was once among the largest in the whole district: the Venetian census of 1577 counted 564 inhabitants. What survives is the family’s mansion, reckoned among the finest monuments of the Venetian period in Crete – it has been called the grandest private house of the Cretan countryside – and a listed building. Pietro De Mezzo, lord of the surrounding land, had the house, originally of three storeys, built towards the end of the 15th century as a rectangular tower-house within a walled court; the De Mezzo arms are displayed on the façade with its carved stonework, and the lintel of the hall bids the visitor welcome in Italian: “Intra vostra signoria senza rispetto” – come in, your lordship, without ceremony. Beside the entrance a fountain, once fed by an aqueduct from a spring a kilometre and a half away, runs into stone basins, with a tablet of 1701 naming Bishop Meletios Trivizas. After the Ottoman conquest an aga moved into the house, which the villagers came to call the Serai. The top floor was lost in the rising of 1828; and when the Turks had gone, in 1897, the villagers stripped the roof timbers and built stones from the tower into a church, so that by about 1900 the villa stood plundered and derelict, with little more than the vaulted ground floor intact. It has since been restored, is used for cultural events – a music festival named after the De Mezzo is held here in June – and was most recently open daily except Tuesdays from 8.30 to 15.00; check the times before you go.

Etia also has two small Byzantine churches: the single-aisled St John and the twin-aisled church of the Panagia and St Catherine. For all their long history, both are in excellent condition. South of the village rises the hill of Etiani Kefala, 715 metres high, where a Minoan peak sanctuary once stood. Anyone who visits Armeni and Etia together sees, within a small compass, how Byzantine piety, Venetian feudal lordship and the farming life of the plateau are bound up with one another.