Ierapetra – Europe’s southernmost town

Ierapetra: the harbour, the ancient city and the Kales fortress

Ierapetra lies at the narrowest point of Crete, only 36 kilometres south of Agios Nikolaos and yet in another world: the town looks not to the Aegean but to the Libyan Sea, and it is the only place of any size on the whole of the south coast. The “Bride of the Libyan Sea”, as Cretans call it, is one of the principal centres of Lasithi – a long seafront promenade, town beaches, a harbour shared by fishing boats and excursion craft, and a daily round that takes little notice of visitors. The 2021 census counted 17,710 people in the town itself and rather more than 27,000 in the sprawling municipality, which covers some 470 square kilometres. From the beginning, its position in the far south of the island bound its history to the sea lanes between Crete, Egypt and North Africa. Add to this a climate without equal in Greece: with more than 3,100 hours of sunshine a year and a mean annual temperature of just under 20°C, Ierapetra is reckoned the sunniest and warmest town in the country. That warmth is the basis of the greenhouse cultivation on which the prosperity of the district rests. The first greenhouses were introduced here in the 1960s by a Dutchman, Paul Kuypers; they now cover some fifteen square kilometres of the coastal plain, and the fruit and vegetables grown under them are sent for export.

Hierapytna: the ancient city

Modern Ierapetra stands on the site of ancient Hierapytna. Antiquity knew it by a string of older names – Kyrva, Pytna and Hierapytna, now and then Kamiros as well – and these cannot be reduced to a single foundation legend. The best known tells of Kyrvas, one of the Corybantes, who is said to have crossed from Rhodes and founded the city. The ancient settlement lay on a sheltered bay, at the point where the island is narrowest and trade could draw most advantage from both seas, and it rose by degrees to become the most considerable Dorian city of eastern Crete. In the 3rd century BC it had a reputation for piracy, and in the Cretan War of 205–200 BC it sided with Philip V of Macedon. In the Hellenistic period it pushed its frontiers far outwards, destroyed neighbouring Praisos around the middle of the 2nd century BC and came at last, alongside Itanos, to dominate the whole east of the island: by about 150 BC its territory ran from Tsoutsouras in the west to Xerokambos in the east. An inscription recording its alliance with the neighbouring city of Priansos survives among the Oxford marbles. Archaeological remains of the old city are to be found about a kilometre from the present centre, in the district of Viglia; much else lies scattered beneath the modern streets.

Trade with Egypt and the other ports of the eastern Mediterranean carried Hierapytna’s growth. It was the last city in Crete to hold out against the Romans, falling to Quintus Caecilius Metellus only in 67 BC after a long siege. Even then its harbour and its workshops kept it important; indeed under Roman rule, as a commercial port in touch with North Africa, the Near East, Italy and mainland Greece, it enjoyed a second flowering. Coins, sculpture, baths, theatres and a great many other finds belong to these centuries. There were two theatres – a small one within the built-up area and a large one at Viglia. The precise position of both is still being established by archaeologists, though work at Viglia since 2013 has begun to bring the larger one to light. There is also record of an installation for naumachiae, mock sea battles staged for an audience, in the area of the former salt pans west of the town.

In Roman times Hierapytna was a naval station and a trading place at once. The city struck its own coinage: the autonomous issues generally carry a palm tree as their badge, while pieces bearing the portraits of Augustus, Tiberius and Caligula show how firmly it was bound into the political and economic fabric of the empire. The Archaeological Collection of Ierapetra keeps objects in which this history can be read from the material remains of the town’s daily life – among them a Roman marble head from the theatre at Viglia.

In the late Roman and early Byzantine periods Ierapetra remained the seat of a bishop; its diocese was among the oldest in Crete, and a bishop of the town is recorded at the Council of Sardica in AD 343. In the 8th and 9th centuries the city suffered grave destruction. Local tradition connects it with the earthquake of 796, while historians lay stress also on the Arab invasion of 824. These are two separate events, and each had its share in deciding the fate of the old city.

Venetians, Ottomans and the legend of Napoleon

After Venice took possession of Crete in 1212, Ierapetra was absorbed into the Venetian administration. It ranked below Sitia in importance, but the town kept its harbour and its community. The Kales fortress at the harbour mouth – the name comes from the Turkish word for a tower – was developed by the Venetians and strengthened in 1626 under Francesco Morosini. The story that the Genoese admiral and corsair Enrico Pescatore built it, in or about 1212, belongs to local tradition. The earthquake of 1508 did severe damage in Ierapetra and other Cretan towns – the town is said to have been levelled – and it was later rebuilt on a more modest scale. In 1647 it fell to the Ottomans, while work on the defences was still in hand; when the French botanist Tournefort came this way at the beginning of the 18th century he found nothing more than an insignificant village.

In Ierapetra visitors are shown a house that local tradition associates with Napoleon Bonaparte. The story goes that on 26 June 1798, on his way to Egypt, Napoleon spent a night here as an unknown traveller in the house of one Andreas Peroulios; in the morning his hosts found a note bearing his name. The tale has become part of the town’s memory, but no document supports it. It is more accurate, therefore, to speak of “Napoleon’s House” as a monument of local tradition. The building itself, a town house of the late 18th or early 19th century, stands in the old quarter about a hundred metres from the Kales.

Napoleon’s House now belongs to the town of Ierapetra, which bought it from the last heir. The old quarter preserves several monuments of the Ottoman period: the mosque of the late 19th century, whose marble lintel carries a verse from the Koran, which still has its mihrab and the stump of its minaret, and which for a time housed the municipal philharmonic; beside it the fountain of the Ottoman mayor Karakasis, built for the ritual washing of the faithful; and the Mehtepi, a school put up in 1899 for the Turkish children of the town. The Mehtepi building now houses the Archaeological Collection of Ierapetra.

In the 19th century Ierapetra took part in the Cretan risings and in the movement for the liberation of the island. In 1897 the bands of Michail Korakas and Emmanouil Kokkinis, some three thousand fighters in all, attacked the Ottoman positions; Kokkinis was killed in the fighting. In 1898 the town passed into the hands of the international administration of Crete, and the Greek flag was raised on the Kales. In 1905 the political union of Crete with Greece was proclaimed here, on the central square – a union finally accomplished in 1913.

What to see in Ierapetra

The Kales stands at the entrance to the harbour and is regarded as the only surviving fortress in the southern part of the town: a squat rectangle with corner towers and battlemented walls, floodlit at night above the fishing boats. The Venetian defences were patched up again and again after earthquakes and raids; under the Ottomans, who reworked them in their turn, the fort once more served to protect the harbour. Inside it is an empty shell, without displays or explanatory signs, so that a short visit is enough to walk the walls and look out over the port. Today the Kales is a monument of the town’s history and the setting for municipal cultural events, most of them in summer. Near by is the church known as the Panagia tou Kale, built between the 12th and 14th centuries.

The Archaeological Collection of Ierapetra occupies the former Ottoman school of 1899. The display runs from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century AD and takes in Minoan, Greek, Roman and early Byzantine antiquities. There is pottery, including Vasiliki ware of the Early Minoan period, as well as potters’ turntables from the settlement of Fournou Koryfi near Myrtos, a Minoan mould for casting axes, coins, sculpture and objects of everyday use. The two most celebrated pieces are a Late Minoan clay sarcophagus, or larnax, from Episkopi, its sides painted with scenes of hunting and chariots, and the almost undamaged marble statue of a goddess of the 2nd century AD, found at Viglia and interpreted as Persephone or Demeter. The collection is open from 8.30 to 15.30 and closed on Tuesdays.

The old quarter of Kato Mera has kept its narrow lanes and a number of buildings of the Ottoman period. The name means “lower part” and distinguishes the historic core by the harbour from the later town. Here the mosque, the Mehtepi, Napoleon’s House and the squares bound up with the history of the port lie only a few steps apart; the town also has a 14th-century church of Afentis Christos, which keeps a finely carved and painted wooden icon. The circuit can be managed in a good hour and is at its most agreeable in the late afternoon, when the lanes are in shade.

Ierapetra is known not least for its coast: beaches stretch away to the west and east of the town, and the promenade leads to the harbour and the walks along the water. The east beach is about a kilometre long; the south beach by the Kales is a well-kept shingle beach of dark pebbles in the middle of the town, and it tends to be crowded in summer. Those who want more room go five kilometres east to Koutsounari, where the so-called Long Beach runs on for some two and a half kilometres. Beaches, harbour, old town and archaeological monuments compose a single townscape. In season the boats for the island of Chrysi, eight nautical miles offshore, also leave from the harbour.