Hersonissos – sea, ancient harbour and hill villages

The holiday coast of Hersonissos

Hersonissos, officially Limenas Chersonisou – “Harbour of Hersonissos” – lies some 26 kilometres east of Heraklion and is one of the most heavily developed tourist centres on Crete. As late as the first half of the 20th century it was little more than the landing place of the village of Ano Hersonissos, two kilometres inland; in 1900 just 133 people lived by the harbour, shipping out olive oil, carobs and hides. Only from the 1960s did it grow into the town whose population multiplies every summer; the municipal unit now counts some 7,300 permanent residents, and the wider municipality, formed in 2011 and stretching from Gouves to Malia, about 27,000. The coast consists of sandy beaches and small coves equipped for bathing and water sports: the long, narrow and crowded town beach, the calmer coves in the lee of Cape Sarandaris to the west of the harbour, and the quieter strands towards Drapanos to the east. There are hotels of every category, restaurants, tavernas and cafés, an aquarium that has been open since 1995, and nearby an eighteen-hole golf course, the only one on the island. Yet individual stretches of the old shoreline still preserve the memory of the ancient harbour.

The street of St Paraskevi

Nightlife is concentrated on Odos Agias Paraskevis (Αγίας Παρασκευής), whose pedestrian stretch is lined with bars and restaurants. The street is named after the church of St Paraskevi, which is partly built into the rock of the Kastri headland and looks down on the harbour – a quiet place that stands in curious contrast to the bustle bearing its name.

The ancient harbour of Lyttos

Hersonissos grew up beside the ancient town of Cherronesos or Chersonesos, in plain English “peninsula” – meaning the rocky spur of Kastri, which shelters the bay and attracted settlers as early as Minoan times; pottery of that age has been found on the hill and along the coast as far as Anissaras and Stalida. In Classical and Hellenistic times the place was the harbour of Lyttos, a powerful Dorian city in the interior of Crete, with which it was joined in a common citizenship. It nevertheless kept a degree of independence, had its own magistrates and struck its own coins, whose reverse was adorned with the prow of a ship. On Kastri stood a temple of Britomartis, a Cretan goddess akin to Artemis; Strabo already mentions it. A cemetery of thirty rock-cut tombs, furnished with vases, gold and silver coins and a good deal of jewellery, shows how prosperous the townspeople were. Under Roman rule the harbour outstripped its mother city: moles and quays were built, an aqueduct, a theatre, public baths and other civic buildings. From the Roman town the Sarakinos fountain (Σαρακηνός) survives, decorated with mosaics showing sea scenes and fishermen.

The Roman aqueduct and the town’s monuments

On the coast and in the eastern part of the town remains of the Roman water supply can be seen, an aqueduct of the 1st to 2nd century AD that brought water from the mountainous hinterland over a distance of some 14 kilometres; arcades still stand in the valley near Potamies. It ended in a huge underground cistern, 58 metres long, 22 wide and five and a half deep. Fragments of the ancient theatre and of a marble fountain also survive. The theatre, whose ruin was still being drawn by travellers of the Venetian period, has vanished as a building because local people used its stones for their houses; the last of it was pulled down in 1897. When the sea is calm the sunken Roman moles can be made out in the harbour basin, and remains of fortification run round the hill of Kastri. All this shows that Hersonissos was not merely a harbour but a well-appointed town with a sophisticated water supply and public buildings.

Churches and the early Christian heritage

The church of St George stands on Cape Sarandaris, a small headland west of the town; the twin-aisled, vaulted building was once the dependency of a monastery. On the eastern part of the coast, about two kilometres from the harbour, lies the church of St Nicholas, whose present building is dated to the 17th or 18th century; beside it the mosaic floors of an early Christian basilica of the 6th century have been uncovered, a church 50 metres long and 19 wide whose pavements are the better preserved of the two in the town. A second basilica, three-aisled and likewise with floor mosaics, among the largest on Crete, rose in the 5th or 6th century on Kastri – a reminder that Hersonissos was also the seat of a bishop, subordinate to the metropolitan of Gortyn. Its bishops attended the Church councils from Ephesus in 431 to Nicaea in 787. The title has endured: the metropolis to which the district now belongs styles itself “of Petra and Cherronisos”, and under Venice, from the 13th century until the Ottoman conquest of 1669, a line of Latin bishops bore the name as well. When earthquakes and the raids of Arab seafarers in the 7th century made the coast unsafe, inhabitants and bishop withdrew inland.

Water parks and beaches

For a day by the water there are large water parks in the surrounding area; one of them, Watercity, lies in the direction of Anopoli and covers about 40,000 square metres. It belongs to the resort’s hinterland, not to the historic core of Hersonissos. The beaches run eastwards towards Stalida and Malia and form a long, almost unbroken tourist zone, the three resorts having merged into a single strip some ten kilometres long. At Cape Drapanos, between Hersonissos and Stalida, the open-air museum of Lychnostatis, opened in 1992, presents Cretan folk culture – a farmhouse, a windmill, workshops and a herb garden.

Ano Hersonissos, Piskopiano and Koutouloufari

From the noisy seafront road one should climb to the foot of Mount Charakas and visit three old villages: Ano Hersonissos, Piskopiano and Koutouloufari. Their stone houses, narrow paved lanes, old olive mills and the view over the Sea of Crete give an idea of the rural life that existed here before the coast became a resort. Ano Hersonissos, “upper” Hersonissos, is the mother village of the harbour; its square, with plane trees and tavernas, is busy on summer evenings. Piskopiano carries in its name the memory of the bishop (episkopos) who is said to have moved his seat here, where it remained until the diocese was transferred to the Pediada in the 10th century. A three-aisled basilica of the 6th century, 45 metres long and 20 wide, once stood in the village, and its marble is thought to have been reused in the sanctuary of the 19th-century church of the Panagia, whose south wall preserves masonry and remains of frescoes from an older chapel and whose iconostasis carries icons dated 1863. A museum of rural life has been installed in a stone olive mill of the 19th century. In Koutouloufari the church of St Basil, built in 1840, encloses a small 14th-century chapel as its sanctuary.