Sitia: Port of Eastern Crete and the Town of Kornaros

The town of the bay and the Venetian Kazarma

Sitia (Σητεία) lies on the north-eastern coast of Crete, at the head of a deep bay that opens towards the sea lanes of the Aegean. With some eleven thousand inhabitants it is the principal town of the far east of the island, and the long road that crosses Crete from the west – and, on paper, the European route E75 from northern Norway – comes to an end here. Today it is a resort with a promenade, beaches and a harbour, but the sea alone does not define it. Behind the life of the present town stand ancient Eteia, Byzantine fortifications, the Venetian administration, the farming villages of Lasithi and the literary memory of Vitsentzos Kornaros.

The town grew up where the sea route met the roads leading into the interior of the island. Sitia was therefore never an isolated coastal settlement: its harbour linked eastern Crete with the islands of the Aegean, and the surrounding villages supplied the town with the produce of their fields. The Venetian census of 1583 recorded 54 villages and 13,572 inhabitants in the territory of Sitia. The harbour still does the same work – ferries call on their way between Piraeus and the islands to the east – and since June 1984 the town has also had a small airport on the plateau just above it.

The history of Sitia begins long before the Venetians. The present town arose beside ancient Eteia (also Itia), known from the written sources and from archaeological finds; the modern name probably goes back to the phrase ‘eis Eteian’ (“to Eteia”) or the genitive ‘tis Eteias’. In the district of Petras, on a low hill at the eastern edge of the town about a kilometre from the centre, there was an important settlement as early as the Bronze Age, with still older remains, from the end of the Neolithic around 3000 BC, on the neighbouring hill of Kephala. Systematic excavation, directed from 1985 by the Greek archaeologist Metaxia Tsipopoulou, brought to light a small Minoan palace with paved floors and painted plaster, an archive of documents in Cretan hieroglyphic script and a cemetery of the local elite; the settlement was destroyed around 1450 BC and never recovered. The early inhabitants were regarded as Eteocretans, descendants of the original Minoan population; later the place served as the harbour of powerful Praisos in the hinterland. Eteia struck its own coins, and Myson, whom some ancient authors counted among the Seven Sages, is said to have come from the town. In Roman and Byzantine times it was the seat of a bishop. After antiquity the settlement passed through the Byzantine age, the Arab conquest and the restoration of Byzantine rule. The Venetians, masters of Crete from the early 13th century, made Sitia the administrative and defensive centre of the east of the island.

Vitsentzos Kornaros and Sitia

Vitsentzos Kornaros was born at Sitia, most probably on 26 or 29 March 1553, the son of Iakovos Kornaros and Zambeta Demezzo, of a Venetian-Cretan family – a Hellenised branch of the great Venetian house of Cornaro. The family belonged to the landowning nobility of eastern Crete, and his brother Andrea was himself a man of letters, a poet and historian who wrote in Italian. Kornaros spent his childhood and youth in the country around Sitia, chiefly at Trapezonda and Piskokefalo, villages a short way inland from the town. Until the years 1587 to 1590 he lived there as a landed gentleman who knew the speech and the way of life of the Cretan country people intimately.

Later Kornaros moved to Candia – Kastro, “the castle”, as its Greek inhabitants called the present Heraklion in Venetian times. There he married Marietta Zeno, by whom he had two daughters, Eleni and Katerina, took part in the life of the city and kept up his ties with his native Sitia. He held public office from 1591, serving as a health commissioner during the plague that ravaged the city until 1593, and he belonged to the Accademia degli Stravaganti, the literary society founded by his brother. The poet died around 1613 and was buried in the Franciscan church of San Francesco in Candia. Little is known of his life; his biographers therefore compare the documents with what he tells us of himself in the closing lines of the “Erotokritos”, where he gives his name and acknowledges Sitia as the place of his birth and upbringing.

The poem falls into five parts: the love of the two young people; the knightly tournament, which Erotokritos wins; the secret love and the banishment of Erotokritos; the imprisonment of Aretousa; and lastly the war and the return of the hero, who comes back in disguise to save the kingdom from its invaders before making himself known. Besides the “Erotokritos”, the religious drama “The Sacrifice of Abraham” is attributed to Kornaros. The first printed edition of the poem appeared in Venice in 1713, after it had long circulated in manuscript. It left its mark on later Greek poets from Dionysios Solomos to Kostis Palamas and George Seferis. On Crete its verses are still sung by the island’s musicians and recited from memory.

Sitia and the cultural memory of Crete

Today the name of Kornaros lives on in Sitia in the “Kornaria” festival, which the town holds in the summer months. Plays, concerts and exhibitions are staged in the Kazarma and at other places in the town. So the fortress that was built to protect the town has become a place where the memory of the poet and the present-day cultural life of eastern Crete are kept alive.

Sitia is known for its archaeological museum, which shows the Minoan finds from Petras, Palekastro and Zakros, and for olive oil, honey, cheese, herbs and wine. From the town it is an easy journey to Palekastro, Itanos, Vai and Zakros, and to Toplou Monastery on the way; the whole of this eastern tip of the island lies within the Sitia UNESCO Global Geopark. More recent history has left its traces too: in 1941 first Italian and later German troops occupied the area, and the population organised the resistance commemorated by memorials in the town and the surrounding country. What sets Sitia apart is its combination of sea, farming hinterland, fortress walls and literature. Here history carries on in the harbour, in the streets, in the festival performances and in the sound of the Cretan dialect.