Chania Harbourside

Chania, Crete, Greece, 19 October 2018.

(Click on any image to see it in a larger size, if you are on a PC or tablet at least.)

Looking across Chania Harbour.

We’d arrived the previous evening after driving from Sougia (previous post) and were staying nearby in the old city.

Giali Tzami (Mosque of the Seaside), taken from the same spot.

This was the first mosque built in Chania, in 1649, shortly after the Ottoman takeover. After the last Moslems left in 1923 (following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922), it became first a museum and then an art gallery.

Chania lighthouse.

The original lighthouse was built by the Venetians between 1595 and 1601. It was destroyed in1645 after the Ottoman takeover. It was rebuilt by Egyptian troops under the Ottoman Empire in 1864, upon the original base. Crete had been run by Mohammed Ali of Egypt from 1830 to 1840, during the time when he had built an empire inside the Ottoman Empire.

Street musicians.

The Firka Fortress.

It was built in 1629 by the Venetians to protect the harbour from invaders such as the Ottomans who turned up in 1645. A chain could be raised across the harbour mouth from the fortress to the lighthouse.

A submarine in Chania Harbour?

No, not really but you can go inside it and view underwater through glass windows.

Harbour wall and a glass-bottom boat.

My guess is that there were cannons on the wall and the small building was the ammunition store.

Elegant harbour-side transport.

A reflection in the water (you probably worked that out).

Walking beside the Neoria or dockyards.

The Neoria were for maintenance of ships. There is a long history of such structures and there were similar ones in Carthage for example. The first ones were built by the Venetians in 1204, when Venice occupied Crete following the Latin conquest of Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade. By 1607 there were twenty-two Neoria. This row of seven survive, plus another single one further west.

Is it a fishing boat or a street market?

View across a flotilla of moored small boats to the Neoria.

Another elegant harbour-side transport, this time with a female driver aged maybe eight.

Minaret and bell tower behind the Neoria.

Harbour-side views.

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A view of the lighthouse from walking along the harbour wall (there was no entry).

Looking back along the harbour wall.

Walls with perhaps many stories to tell.

Boats and Neoria.

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Fishing boat and nets.

The Grand Arsenal of Chania.

This is a long building because it was originally one of the Neoria, built around 1585. It was converted to a conventional building in the mid nineteenth century and a second floor added in 1872. It was damaged by German bombing in the Second World War and reconstructed in 2002. It is now the Centre of Mediterranean Architecture and hosts events, conferences, theatrical performances, workshops and concerts.