Agios Nikolaos

The town stands on the site of Lato pros Kamara, the harbour of the Dorian hill city of Lato near Kritsa. When the security of the hillfort mattered less than easy access to the sea, its people moved down to the coast, and by the 3rd century BC the two towns formed one administrative unit, worshipped the same goddess, Eileithyia, and shared a coinage. The harbour town grew as Lato declined, leaving an extensive Roman cemetery, and in the early Byzantine period it was the seat of the bishopric of Kamara.

Early in the 13th century, perhaps in 1206, a fortress was built on the hill where the regional government offices now stand, probably by the Genoese Enrico Pescatore. Named Mirabello, it gave its name to the province and the bay. The Venetians rebuilt it after an earthquake in 1303 and again after pirates destroyed it in 1537. In 1646, during the long war for Crete, its commander surrendered it to the Ottomans at once; the Venetians retook it but destroyed it, as Spinalonga met their needs. Under Ottoman rule the place emptied, though its harbour still shipped carobs from the province.

The modern town was founded during the revolution of 1866 by settlers from Fourni, Kritsa, Heraklion and Sfakia, who used the ruins of the fortress as building stone. First called Mantraki, it took its present name from a small 9th-century Byzantine chapel of Saint Nicholas on the Ammoudi peninsula. In 1904 the capital of the Lasithi prefecture moved here from Neapoli, and between 1905 and 1907 the French Army built the wider channel that now joins the lake to the harbour. The population grew from about 1,100 in 1928 to more than 8,000 in 1981, and from the 1960s the town grew rapidly as a resort.

The town's best-known moment of the year comes at Orthodox Easter. As midnight turns to Easter Day, most of the population gathers around Lake Voulismeni — to locals simply "the Lake" — for fireworks and firecrackers. The lake has gathered legends of its own: an ancient story has the goddesses Athena and Artemis bathing in it, and modern ones claim it has no bottom or is connected to the volcano of Santorini. Cliff-diving competitions with athletes from several countries have been held at the lake in recent years.

The cinema left a mark here. In the 1960s directors including Jules Dassin and the Disney studio came to film, and productions shot in and around the town include He Who Must Die, The Moon-Spinners and the BBC series The Lotus Eaters; Daphne du Maurier set her story Not After Midnight here. The film director Nikos Koundouros, who lived in the town, designed the four-metre Rape of Europa statue on the harbour pier, made by the local sculptors Nikos and Pantelis Sotiriadis, who also made the Horn of Amalthea sculpture facing the bay and the islet of Agioi Pantes.

Local identity is strongly Cretan. People in the surrounding villages still call the town Gialos, "the shore". The steep stairways between the seafront and the upper streets are a feature in themselves, several designed by local architects and many painted with motifs. Sport is organised through town clubs for football, basketball, cycling, tennis and sailing, and sailing races are held from the municipal marina.

At the 2021 census the town had between about 12,100 and 13,600 people by different counts, and the wider municipality about 27,800, which takes in Elounda, Kritsa, Neapoli and many smaller villages. As the capital of the Lasithi regional unit, Agios Nikolaos holds the administrative offices of Lasithi and serves as the hub for the twenty or so villages and farms around it, which keeps it busy outside the holiday season.

Tourism is the main source of income, alongside olive growing and free-range livestock farming. Most foreign visitors come from western Europe, with Greek holidaymakers concentrated in mid-August; the luxury resorts of Elounda, a short drive north, add to the area's employment. A department of the Hellenic Mediterranean University now teaches tourism courses in the town, and on weekend nights students fill the bars of 25 Martiou Street.

The town is built on five hills beside the mouth of the Xeropotamos stream, and much of daily life happens on the level ground between them: around the lake, along the harbour and on the seafront promenade to the marina. The Wednesday morning market brings produce in from the countryside, and the town's many small beaches are regularly certified for cleanliness and facilities.

The food here is Cretan, built on plants, olive oil, pulses and wild herbs, with meat traditionally playing a smaller part and yoghurt with fresh fruit the usual dessert. Dakos is the classic starter: a slice of soaked paximadi, a hard barley rusk, topped with tomato and cheese such as mizithra or feta, flavoured with oregano and often finished with olives or capers. Kalitsounia are small pies of fresh mizithra cheese or herbs, baked or fried, and sometimes sweet with honey poured over them; sarikopita is a cheese pie twisted into the shape of the sariki, a traditional Cretan headscarf.

Snails are a Cretan speciality — chochlioi boubouristi are fried with rosemary and vinegar, and they are also cooked with tomato — and Cretan wine accompanies meals. The weekly market is known for its tomatoes, and the local thyme honey takes its flavour from the thyme the bees feed on. Kitroplatia's meze restaurants and the cafés around the lake are where visitors and residents eat out.

Meals often end with tsikoudia, which in eastern Crete is often called raki: a strong brandy distilled from the grape pomace left after winemaking, usually made in the villages in late October and early November, served chilled from the freezer and often offered free at the end of a meal.