Rethymno Tour

A Rethymno tour explores the old harbour town of Rethymno on the north coast of Crete, between Chania and Heraklion. The tour is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.

This post covers ancient Rithymna, the Ottoman years, writers, museums, festivals, sea turtles, the Battle of Crete, the university, the best months and common questions.

What is a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour is a visit to Rethymno town. The town is the seat of a municipality of 396.256 square kilometres. That municipality counted 57,216 inhabitants at the 2021 census. Among Greece’s regional units, Rethymno ranks 43rd by area and 41st by population.

On a Rethymno tour, the town’s name has deep roots. It comes from the ancient name Rhithymna. This is widely thought to be a pre-Greek word from the Carian language.

Carian has place names ending in -mna or -mnos, like Kalymna, Larymna and Methymna. Bulgarian linguist Vladimir Georgiev linked Rhithymna to Greek words for stream and water. His idea was not widely accepted.

On a Rethymno tour, the town has more than one name. Locals commonly call it Rethemno or Rethemnos. This form has been used in Cretan proverbs and songs since Venetian times.

Older Italian forms of the name were Rettimo and Retimno. The Latin name was Civitas Rethymnae. Rethymno is also known as the City of Letters, or Civitas Litterarum in Latin.

• Landscape: Rethymno is built in a large basin, with big mountain masses to its south.
• Streams: A large number of streams cross the town, but the majority have been covered over.
• Port: The western, commercial part of the port has a sailing depth of 6 to 8 metres.

Rethymno town had 8,648 residents in 1940 and 32,468 in 2011. After it, the regional unit’s largest places in 2021 were Violi Charaki and Anogeia.

Which traces of ancient Rithymna does a Rethymno tour find?

A Rethymno tour follows traces that start in the Neolithic period. Neolithic potsherds are the oldest recorded sign of life in Rethymno. They were found on Palaiokastro hill, where the Fortezza now stands. Other traces include tombs, coins and a cave.

On a Rethymno tour, the town suburb of Mastambas has its own ancient find. A rock-cut tomb was dug there in 1947. It dates from 1350 to 1250 BC.

That tomb held a big mixing bowl painted with a stylised octopus. It also held a tall-stemmed cup and three false-necked jars. Rhithymna’s silver and bronze coins had the head of Apollo or Athena.

On a Rethymno tour, ancient writers add to the story. Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy both list Rhithymna. In their lists, it is the first north-coast town east of Amphimalla.

The Armeni cemetery covers about 35 acres. Only four of its tombs had been looted by the end of the Minoan period. No other excavated Minoan cemetery is considered as intact.

• Oldest grave: Armeni’s oldest grave, a single tholos tomb of corbelled stones, dates to about 1625–1470 BC.
• Burials: Over 1,000 people were buried at Armeni, with 143 males counted against 107 females.
• Hunt scene: One painted clay coffin shows four dogs, two stags and an agrimi, the Cretan wild goat.

Gerani cave, 7 km west of Rethymno, was found on 15 March 1969. Digs inside turned up three human skeletons.

How did the Ottoman years shape a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour reveals a town with an Ottoman past. Soon after Chania fell, Rethymno’s leading men wrote to Hussein Pasha. They said they were ready to submit to the Sultan. The Ottomans never moved settlers to Crete, and its Muslims were Cretans.

On a Rethymno tour, the Kara Musa Pasha Mosque stands on Arkadiou Street. It is named after the Turkish commander of the naval operations that captured Rethymno in 1646.

Rethymno’s Muslims built the Veli Pasha Mosque possibly around 1651, on ground where Ottoman troops had camped. An inscription dates its minaret to the Islamic year 1204. It is Rethymno’s oldest surviving minaret.

On a Rethymno tour, the Valide Sultan Mosque honours Turhan Sultan, mother of Sultan Mehmed IV. It served Rethymno’s Muslims until the 1923 population exchange. By 1925 it was abandoned.

Gülnuş Sultan was born Evmania Voria in Rethymno in 1642. She was the daughter of a Greek Orthodox priest. Her two sons, Mustafa II and Ahmed III, both became Ottoman sultans.

• Fortezza: The Ottomans replaced its Venetian cathedral with a mosque for Sultan Ibrahim the First in 1648.
• Girls’ school: The site of Rethymno’s First Primary School once housed an Ottoman girls’ school founded in 1795.
• Fountain: The Valide Sultan Mosque’s old fountain now stands inside a shop on Bosporus Street.

The last Ottoman census took place in 1881. Muslims then made up over 60% of the people in Crete’s three large north-coast towns.

Which writers tie a Rethymno tour to Cretan literature?

A Rethymno tour reaches a town linked to Cretan literature. Rethymno had its own literary academy, the Vivi, founded in 1562. The playwright Georgios Chortatzis was born there. He lived from about 1545 to about 1610 and wrote in Cretan verse.

On a Rethymno tour, the setting is the town where Chortatzis wrote his tragedy Erofili around 1600. It was first printed in Venice in 1637. It has 3205 verses in Cretan Greek.

The poet Kostis Palamas called Erofili the first work of modern Greek theatre. Chortatzis also wrote the pastoral play Panoria around 1600. Its story is set on Mount Ida.

On a Rethymno tour, Ioannis Andreas Troilos is another writer born in the town around 1590. His tragedy King Rodolinos, 3232 verses long, was first printed in Venice in 1647.

Pandelis Prevelakis is best known for The Chronicle of a Town. It paints a nostalgic picture of Rethymno from 1898 to 1924. At 15, he published the literary magazine Athina for one year.

• Marinos Tzanes Bounialis: From an aristocratic Rethymno family, he wrote The Cretan War, over six hundred pages long.
• Ahmed Resmî Efendi: An Ottoman diplomat and author of Greek descent, he was born in Rethymno in 1700.
• City Hall: A statue of Pandelis Prevelakis stands in front of Rethymno’s City Hall.

Kalliroi Parren, a writer born in Rethymno, launched the Greek feminist movement with the Ladies’ Journal in 1887.

Which museums does a Rethymno tour enter?

A Rethymno tour finds museums inside an old church, a mosque and a town house. Art lovers visit the L. Kanakakis Municipal Gallery in another old building. It opened there in 1992. That building worked as a soap factory until the 1970s.

On a Rethymno tour, the church of Saint Francis holds the Archaeological Museum. The Barozzi family built it around 1530. It was the main church of a monastery of Franciscan monks.

The museum’s stay there is temporary, because a new museum building is still being planned. A marble violin-shaped figurine from the Gerani cave dates from 3600 to 3200 BC.

On a Rethymno tour, the Historical and Folklore Museum fills a listed 17th-century Venetian town house. The museum was founded in 1973 to collect and study folk material from the Rethymno area.

The Veli Pasha Mosque, also called the Mastaba Mosque, opened as the Paleontological Museum in 2008. The mosque has nine domes. The museum’s emblem is the club-horned deer of Rethymno, Candiacervus ropalophorus.

• Tiny deer: Candiacervus ropalophorus, the smallest Cretan deer, stood about 40 cm at the shoulder.
• Dwarf hippo: The Cretan dwarf hippopotamus weighed about 400 kg, far less than its probable ancestor, Hippopotamus antiquus.
• Cretan mammoth: Mammuthus creticus stood about 1 m at the shoulder and was the smallest mammoth ever.

The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete now holds about 700 works, covering Greek art from 1950 until today.

Which festivals fill a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour meets festivals of carnival, theatre and wine. The grand parade fills the last Sunday of Carnival. More than twelve thousand people in about 35 groups march in it. It ends with the burning of King Carnival on the beach.

On a Rethymno tour, the town’s first recorded carnival goes back to February 1901, under the Cretan State. That parade lasted three and a half hours and ended with fireworks, rare at the time.

The first organised post-war carnival paraded on Sunday 28 February 1960. Handmade floats, costumes and masks filled it. The Rethymno Touring Club, founded in 1958, led it and ran the Cretan Wine Festival.

On a Rethymno tour, the carnival’s past shows that it stopped in the mid-1980s. The reason was a lack of money. The Municipality of Rethymno took charge of the carnival in 1993.

The treasure hunt was first played on Sunday 25 February 1990. In February 2017, the hunt set a world record with 1,384 players. The old record stood at 1,001.

• Renaissance Festival: Since 1987, this festival has promoted both the Cretan and the European Renaissance.
• Renaissance stages: They have hosted all works by Cretan playwrights and plenty of Shakespeare, Molière and Goldoni plays.
• Wine festival: Adults at the Festival of Cretan Wine and Certified Cretan Traditional Products taste wine for free.

Kostas Mountakis and Thanassis Skordalos, both lyra players from Rethymno, helped Cretan music win international recognition.

How do sea turtles nest along a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour covers a town where loggerhead turtles nest on the beaches. Over 18 seasons, from 1990 to 2007, those beaches averaged 324 nests a season. The busiest of those seasons brought 516 nests, and the quietest brought 166.

On a Rethymno tour, the town’s beaches count as one of five “major” Greek nesting areas. That means over 100 nests and over 6 nests per kilometre a season.

Those five major areas hold 71.5% of all loggerhead nesting in Greece. From 2008 to 2012, Rethymno averaged 184 nests a year. In those years, Zakynthos averaged 902 and Kyparissia Bay 600.

On a Rethymno tour, gene studies treat the local loggerheads as one of seven Mediterranean management units. Dogs, martens and ghost crabs take only a tiny share of the eggs and hatchlings.

Only part of the Rethymno nesting area lies inside the Natura 2000 network. Nearly the whole nesting coast east of the town is built up, apart from tiny stretches.

• Dunes: Walls, buildings and beach bars flattened the dunes, causing long-term erosion, especially at Sfakaki and Skaleta.
• Water sports: Motorised water sports off Rethymno have caused repeated collisions with turtles between nestings.
• Sand heat: During the 2012 nesting season, sand surface temperatures ranged from 13.0°C to 61.5°C.

From 7 July 2012, sand 50 cm deep at one spot stayed above 29.5°C. That was warm enough to produce female hatchlings.

What did the Battle of Crete leave on a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour crosses a Battle of Crete battlefield. The Germans sent the 2nd Parachute Regiment against Rethymno, about 1,700 men under Colonel Alfred Sturm. Ian Campbell had 1,270 Australian veterans and 2,300 Greek soldiers, while 800 Greek Gendarmerie cadets held Rethymno town.

On a Rethymno tour, the battle story begins with a late German drop. The drop was set for 14:00, but the first 24 of 161 Ju 52 transports arrived at 16:15.

Large numbers of Greek soldiers got just three rifle rounds each. Campbell had eight guns: four 75 mm and four captured Italian 100 mm. He also had two Matilda II heavy tanks.

On a Rethymno tour, the ground near Perivolia recalls Greek gendarmes and armed civilians. They beat off a German push into town at about 18:00. The civilians included priests and a monk.

The German battalion that captured Hill A suffered 400 dead or wounded. Soldiers of the Greek 4th Infantry Regiment captured Colonel Sturm. He spent 10 days in a makeshift camp at Pigi.

• Hospital: German and Australian doctors near Adele cut up parachutes for bandages in a joint hospital.
• Losses: At the surrender, 934 Australians became prisoners, 190 of them wounded; 96 had been killed.
• Escape: With local help, 13 officers and 39 other ranks of the 2/11th Battalion escaped to Egypt.

In 1941, German paratroopers executed over 80 civilians on the beach at Missiria. A marble memorial column near the site lists 110 names.

How does the University of Crete shape a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour takes place in a town shaped by the University of Crete. A decree of 27 September 1973 gave the new university its name and made Rethymno its seat. The town hosts the university’s central administration, the Rectorate and the Senate.

On a Rethymno tour, the university story reaches back to the 1960s. In 1965 the Education Ministry’s plan for a University of Crete placed an agricultural school in Rethymno.

Next came a plan for law studies in the town. On 15 April 1973 Greece announced its third law school for Rethymno. However, the school moved to Komotini in 1974.

On a Rethymno tour, the campus stands in the Gallos area, 4.5 km from the town centre. Gallos village had 922 residents in the 2011 census. It sits 200 m above sea level.

The Institute for Mediterranean Studies is located in Rethymno’s old town. Its researchers study the history and culture of Greece, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Their work spans prehistory to modern times.

• Institute: The institute was founded in Rethymno in 1985 as one of FORTH’s 10 institutes.
• Library: The university’s Central Library holds more than 400,000 book volumes and over 32,000 journal titles.
• Students: As of 2017 the university had 16,000 registered undergraduates and 2,500 registered postgraduates.

The institute’s record also stands out. It is the only Greek research or university body to have won nine European Research Council humanities grants.

Which months suit a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour meets very wet and very dry months across the year. January is the wettest month in Rethymno, with 133.8 mm of rain on average. July averages 0.5 mm of rain, August 2.0 mm and September 20.4 mm.

On a Rethymno tour, each month brings its own weather. The weather service’s long-term Rethymno figures come from a station 7 m above sea level. They cover 1957 to 1997.

The hottest reading in that Rethymno record is 41.4 °C. The coldest reading in that record is 0.8 °C, just above freezing. August has the warmest nights, with a mean minimum of 21.8 °C.

On a Rethymno tour, spring needs careful timing. The weather service says Greek spring is short, because winter ends late and summer starts early. April rain drops to 35.0 mm on average.

The month after April averages 14.2 mm of rain and 3.1 rain days. Its mean daily high reaches 24.2 °C. In June, the mean daily high climbs to 28.2 °C.

• October: Rain jumps to 90.5 mm on average this month, spread over 8.2 rain days.
• December: Rain in Rethymno averages 108.9 mm this month, spread over 14.6 rain days.
• January: This month also has the highest number of rain days, at 15.1 on average.

Winter storms tend to pause in January and early February for sunny spells, says Greece’s weather service. These are the Halcyon days, known since antiquity.

What do visitors ask about a Rethymno tour?

A Rethymno tour brings up questions about the coast road, the buses and the town beach. Visitors also ask about the old harbour lighthouse and the protected streets of the old town. The marina and its clubs draw questions as well.

What is the coast road like on a Rethymno tour?

The old National Road 90 still runs through Rethymno town, while the VOAK slowly replaces it. By 2019, only 7 km of north coast road around Rethymno had been widened to four lanes.

What buses can visitors use around a Rethymno tour?

Two bus routes run from Rethymno to Heraklion. One uses the old national road, and one uses the new road. Buses also serve the university at Gallos and the town’s suburbs and districts.

What is there to know about the beach before a Rethymno tour?

In summer, the heart of the town beach has spaces for mini-soccer, beach volleyball, beach tennis and chess. The town paid the FORTH foundation to study how to stop erosion east of the marina.

Can visitors enter the lighthouse on a Rethymno tour?

Visitors can walk along the pier to the old harbour lighthouse, but the tower stays closed. A lighthouse directory dates it to 1864 and gives the stone tower a height of 16 m.

What makes the old town stand out on a Rethymno tour?

Rethymno’s old town was declared a Historic Preserved Monument in 1967. In 1985, it was also named a Traditional Settlement. Ottoman builders added the alem, a Muslim faith symbol, and inscriptions to its doorways.

What can visitors find at the marina on a Rethymno tour?

The Rethymno marina covers 20,000 square metres of land. Its building holds a branch of the Marine Scout Association and the Yachting Club of Rethymno. A Hellenic Red Cross first-aid station also works there.