Souda travel guide

Top 10 sights in Souda

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Olaf Tausch · CC BY 3.0

   Kydonia

   The ancient city on the site of modern Chania, occupied from the Late Minoan period and one of the most important towns of western Crete. Excavations in the Kastelli quarter have found Linear A and B tablets, showing it was a Mycenaean administrative centre.

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2. 

   2© Aeleftherios · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Aptera

   A large ancient city on a plateau a kilometre inland from Souda Bay, thirteen kilometres east of Chania, whose Roman cisterns, theatre and temple foundations survive. Its name means wingless, from a myth that the Sirens lost their feathers here after losing a contest to the Muses.

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   Küçük Hasan Pasha Mosque

   A domed Ottoman mosque of 1645 on the Venetian harbour at Chania, built the year the city fell to the Turks, also called the Yalı Mosque for its position on the shore. It has been empty of worshippers since 1923 and is used for exhibitions.

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4. 

   4© Tomisti · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Archaeological Museum of Chania

   The archaeological museum of Chania, which moved in 2022 from the Venetian church of San Francesco on Halidon Street to a new building at Chalepa. Minoan larnakes, Linear B tablets and Roman mosaics from the region are its core.

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   Presentation of the Virgin Mary Cathedral

   The Orthodox cathedral of Chania on Athinagora Square, built between 1850 and 1860 with permission and money from an Ottoman pasha whose son had been rescued from a well by the local Christians. It is known as the Trimartiri from its three altars.

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6. 

   6© User:Nikater · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Etz Hayyim Synagogue

   The only surviving synagogue in Crete, converted from a Venetian church in the seventeenth century and used by the Romaniote community. All 269 Cretan Jews were deported in 1944 and drowned when their ship was torpedoed; the building was restored and reopened in 1999.

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   Agios Nikolaos in Chania

   An Orthodox church on Splanzia square built by the Dominicans in the Venetian period, converted to a mosque under the Ottomans and returned to Christian use in the twentieth century. It still has its minaret standing beside the bell tower.

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8. 

   8© C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Assumption Cathedral, Chania

   The Catholic cathedral of Chania, dedicated to the Assumption, rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century when Catholic worship was permitted again on the island. It stands in a courtyard off Halidon Street and serves a small congregation.

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9. 

   9© Wouter Hagens · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Nautical Museum of Crete

   A maritime museum on the Venetian harbour with ship models, navigation instruments, photographs and war relics arranged from the Bronze Age to the present. Its second section, in the Venetian arsenal, holds a full-scale reconstruction of a Minoan ship sailed to Athens in 2004.

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10. 

    10© Jlundqvi · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Izzeddin Fortress

    An Ottoman fort at Kalami on Souda Bay, built in 1872 by Reouf Pasha and named after a son of Sultan Abdulaziz. It served as a prison for political prisoners until 1950 and executions were carried out in it; it is only occasionally open.

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1. 

   1© C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fortifications of Chania

   The walls of Chania, in two circuits: an inner Byzantine wall on ancient foundations around the Kastelli hill, and an outer bastioned wall built by Venice in the sixteenth century against the Ottomans. The Schiavo bastion and the western moat are the best-preserved stretches.

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2. 

   2© AWI · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fallschirmjäger memorial

   A German memorial three kilometres west of Chania to the paratroopers killed in the ten-day Battle of Crete in May 1941 — the airborne invasion cost so many men that Hitler never attempted another. Cretans call the diving-eagle sculpture the German bird.

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   Suda Bay War Cemetery

   A Commonwealth cemetery on the shore of Souda Bay holding 1,527 graves, of which 776 are unidentified, mostly from the Battle of Crete in 1941. Nineteen First World War burials are also here, and the site looks across the bay to the White Mountains.

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4. 

   4© C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Chalepa

   A district of Chania that was a separate town, of consulates and mansions built when the great powers oversaw Crete. The Halepa Pact of 1878, which set the terms of Cretan autonomy under Ottoman rule, was signed here.

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5. 

   5© Geotiger18 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   War Museum of Chania

   A branch of the Athens War Museum in Chania, holding material from the Cretan revolts, the Balkan wars and the 1941 battle. It burned down in 2018 and has not reopened.

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6. 

   6© C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Eleftherios Venizelos Museum of Chalepa

   The house at Halepa where Eleftherios Venizelos lived from 1880 to 1910, before he became prime minister of Greece and the dominant figure of its early twentieth century. The state bought it in March 2002 and gave it to his foundation, which keeps the rooms as they were.

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   School Life Museum

   A museum at Nerokouros, 3.5 kilometres south of Chania, on schooling in Crete, with reconstructed classrooms and the textbooks, slates and punishment books that went with them. It is run by teachers and opens on limited hours.

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