Elounda: the Bay of Ancient Olous

Elounda: the bay, ancient Olous and the island of Spinalonga

Elounda (Ελούντα) lies on the shore of a quiet bay of the Gulf of Mirabello, in the north-east of Crete, about twelve kilometres north of Agios Nikolaos. It is less a single town than a cluster of settlements – the harbour quarter of Schisma, which is the centre, with Mavrikiano, Pano and Kato Elounda and Pines on the slopes behind – and together they have some 2,250 inhabitants. Today it is a resort with a promenade, beaches, tavernas and small jetties, but modern Elounda stands on ground with a far older history. Close together here are the traces of the ancient city of Olous, of early Christian churches, of Venetian fortifications, of fishing hamlets and of present-day tourism.

The bay is screened from the open sea and has served as a natural harbour since antiquity. That made the district well suited to shipping, fishing and trade. Close by lie the Kolokytha peninsula and the island of Spinalonga, which together form an intricate pattern of channels, shallows and sheltered anchorages. The water behind the peninsula is so calm that in the 1930s the flying boats of Imperial Airways put down here on the long route from Britain to the East.

Ancient Olous and the sanctuary of Britomartis

Olous ranked among the more important of the island’s proverbial hundred cities, and tradition speaks – though without firm evidence – of more than 30,000 inhabitants. The site was occupied from Minoan times. Its people controlled the harbour and the sea routes that linked this coast with other parts of the island; they engaged in maritime trade, processed murex shells for purple dye and quarried whetstone, which was still being exported from Elounda in modern times. The city struck its own coins – the numismatist Ioannis Svoronos recorded eleven types, with the image of Artemis Britomartis on one side and Zeus with an eagle, a dolphin or a star on the other. In the late 3rd century BC Olous quarrelled with its neighbour Lato over their borders, a dispute eventually settled by treaty; an inscription of about the same time records an alliance with Rhodes, and another honours Kallikrates, an admiral of the Ptolemies, with the citizenship of the town. An ancient sailing manual, the Stadiasmus, gives the distance from Chersonesos as 260 stadia. The archaeological remains lie within the area of present-day Elounda and are hidden partly under water, partly under later building.

The protectress of the district was held to be Britomartis, the Cretan goddess of the mountains, of hunting and of the wild. In Greek tradition she was identified with Artemis, yet Britomartis keeps a Cretan character of her own. Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD, mentions a wooden cult image of the goddess at Olous said to have been made by Daedalus; a festival, the Britomartia, was held in her honour. Zeus Tallaios and Apollo were worshipped alongside her, and later Asclepius too, who according to tradition had delivered the city from a plague. The cult of Britomartis helps to explain why, in the ancient landscape of Elounda, sacred places lay directly beside the harbour and the residential quarters.

Early Christian Elounda

With the spread of Christianity, basilicas and new places of worship arose at Elounda. The early Christian complexes at Poros and on the Kolokytha peninsula are particularly important. Their mosaic floors, architectural members and remains of walls show that the bay remained inhabited in late Roman times. The mosaic floor at Poros was discovered by French marines as early as 1897–98; in 1937–38 the French School excavated there, and in 1960 a Greek excavation uncovered a three-aisled basilica with a narthex, whose central mosaic may have been taken over from an earlier building. Dated to the 5th century and perhaps the cathedral of Olous, the church had a timber roof and a semicircular apse. The floor, laid in white, black and brick-red tesserae, is among the finest in Crete: geometric and floral patterns frame peacocks, dolphins and other fish, and an inscription names three donors – Theodoulos, Antaxios and Heliodoros – each of whom gave half a gold coin towards the work. It lies in a fenced enclosure in the fields a short walk beyond the canal.

Early Christian basilicas were built as large congregational churches with aisles, columns and mosaics. Their appearance bears witness to an organised Christian community, connected with seaborne trade and with the rural settlements of the coast. The second basilica, on Kolokytha itself, was notable for its fittings of white marble.

Venetians, salt-making and Spinalonga

Under Venetian rule the bay of Elounda served as an important base in eastern Crete. Salt was produced here, goods were shipped and the approaches from the sea were watched. The salt pans were laid out in the 15th century: in winter sea water was let into the basins, through the summer it evaporated, and in September the salt was harvested and stored in large warehouses. In 1583 there were 42 pans. After the Ottoman conquest of the island the importance of the district changed, but the harbour remained part of local trade and fishing, and the salt works carried on – latterly as a Greek state monopoly producing some 1,200 tonnes in 1960, until they were closed in 1972. Thirteen of the basins lay where the village square now spreads out. The remaining pans, shallow rectangles divided by low stone walls, can still be seen in the lagoon beside the causeway to Kolokytha.

In the 16th century the Venetians fortified Spinalonga, the island at the entrance to the bay. The site was surveyed in 1574, the engineer Genese Bressani drew up the plans in 1578, and the foundation stone was laid in 1579; a few years later the fortress mounted 35 cannon. It protected the approaches to the natural harbour and commanded the sea route, and it remained in Venetian hands long after the rest of Crete was lost, surrendering to the Ottomans only in 1715. Later there was an Ottoman settlement on the island – eighty Muslim families lived there by 1830 – and in the 20th century Spinalonga became a leper colony, which received its first patients in October 1904 and was closed in 1957. The history of the island cannot be separated from Elounda and Plaka: people, goods and boats passed between these shores, and with them the memory of a segregated community. Victoria Hislop’s novel “The Island” has made that story widely known, and boats for Spinalonga leave from the harbour at Elounda as well as from Plaka.

Kolokytha and the rural coast

The Kolokytha peninsula – also known, confusingly, as Great Spinalonga – screens the bay from the open sea and forms one of the most memorable landscapes of Elounda. Olive groves, small coves, churches, archaeological remains and the routes to Spinalonga lie side by side here. It was once joined to the mainland by a narrow neck of land on which ancient Olous stood; in 1897–98 French troops cut through this isthmus at Poros with a narrow canal, now crossed by a small bridge. The causeway that leads out to it from the southern end of the village runs between the lagoon and the salt pans, past the stumps of three old stone windmills; it can be driven, but it makes a pleasant level walk of twenty minutes or so from the harbour.

The name Kolokytha is related to the Greek word for ‘pumpkin’ or ‘gourd’, yet in the local geography it is more than a label. The peninsula forms the natural boundary of the bay and makes it clear why Elounda has been a favourable berth for ships since antiquity.

Elounda today

Present-day Elounda lives to two rhythms. By day the bay fills with boats, visitors and bathers; in the evening, though, the old seascape stands out with particular clarity – still water, islands, salt pans and the silhouette of Spinalonga. It was this setting that drew film-makers here – Disney’s “The Moon-Spinners” in 1964, the BBC’s “Who Pays the Ferryman?” in the 1970s – and, after them, the luxury hotels along the shore to the south.

Elounda deserves attention as more than a resort. Within a small compass several thousand years of history can be read here: ancient Olous, the cult of Britomartis, the early Christian basilicas, the Venetian fortifications, the Ottoman past and the memory of Spinalonga. Anyone who wants to understand Elounda should see it not as a single seaside town but as a whole bay, in which every shore preserves its own layer of history.