Rethymno

Rethymno is believed to stand on the site of ancient Rhithymna, whose acropolis crowned the hill now occupied by the Fortezza. Its growth began under Venice, which made it a commercial station between Candia and Chania; it gained its own bishop and nobility, and from about 1250 it was the seat of a Latin diocese. The old town that survives was almost entirely built by the Venetians, with 16th-century houses, arched doorways, stone staircases, a small harbour and narrow streets, and the Fortezza was raised on the hill in the same century.

The Ottomans conquered the town in 1646, in the second year of the Cretan War. Called Resmo in Turkish, it became the centre of a sanjak, and mosques such as the Kara Musa Pasha Mosque, built around the 1680s, were added to the Venetian streets. In the Cretan Revolt of 1866 the Arkadi Monastery in the hills south-east of the town became a centre of resistance; besieged by a large Ottoman force, its defenders ignited the powder store rather than surrender, killing most of those sheltering inside. The Holocaust of Arkadi won sympathy for the Cretan cause across Europe.

In the Battle of Crete in May 1941 German paratroopers fought Australian and Greek troops at Rethymno; the defenders held at first, but the Germans won after reinforcements arrived through Maleme. Tourism has since become the main source of income, with many new facilities built over the past twenty years.

Rethymno is known for its carnival, held before Clean Monday. Two weeks before it, local people play the town's Treasure Hunt, which holds a Guinness World Record. Other fixtures are the wine festival at the beginning of July and a festival on 7–8 November in memory of the destruction of the Arkadi Monastery.

The town has a literary portrait of its own: Pandelis Prevelakis's The Chronicle of a Town of 1937 recalls Rethymno from the time of the Cretan State in 1898 to the expulsion of the Cretan Turks. Its museums include the Archaeological Museum, in the Venetian church of Saint Francis, the Historical and Folklore Museum, the L. Kanakakis Municipal Gallery and the Frantzeskaki Collection.

The town's Ottoman buildings have found new uses: the Neratze Mosque, with its minaret, is now the Municipal Odeon arts centre and concert hall. The University of Crete's Rethymno campus gives the town a large student population.

The town of Rethymno had 29,480 inhabitants in the 2021 census, and the wider municipality 45,098. It is the capital of the Rethymno regional unit, lying on the north coast between Chania and Heraklion.

Tourism is the main source of income, and agriculture, especially olive oil and other Mediterranean products, remains important. The University of Crete's Rethymno campus at Gallos holds the schools of philosophy, education and social, economic and political sciences and the university library, with about 8,000 students a year, and the Hellenic Mediterranean University runs a school of music and optoacoustic technologies and a plasma physics and laser institute in the town.

Life runs between the old town, where residents and visitors share the narrow streets, the harbour and the long beach east of the centre, where hotel developments line the shore. The town stays busy outside summer thanks to its students, and regular buses connect it with Chania, Heraklion and the villages of the south coast.

Rethymno's tavernas serve the food of Crete. Local dishes include snails, antikristo, pilaf and dakos, a barley rusk soaked in water or olive oil and topped with chopped tomatoes, feta or mizithra, a whey cheese, and olive oil. Cretan cheeses such as graviera, a hard, slightly sweet cheese, anthotyro and mizithra are widely served, and Cretan specialities include goat cooked with stamnagathi greens.

Raki, also called tsikoudia, ends the meal, usually with fruit or a sweet, and yoghurt with fresh fruit was long the most common Cretan dessert. Olives, raki, ouzo and wine are the common local products to buy, and the town holds a wine festival each July.

The restaurants on the beach front cater mainly to tourists; the small tavernas in the back streets of the old town are generally better. Waterfront tables surround the Venetian harbour, and the bars around the Rimondi Fountain are the noisiest and busiest in town, with quieter places in the lanes nearby.