Crete, region by region

Rethymno

Venetian lanes, mountain lamb and the wilder south coast

The short version

The old town is Crete's best-kept Venetian quarter — sleep inside the walls, not on the strip.
Arkadi monastery is the island's national shrine; arrive before the tour coaches, ideally by 9am.
Anogia, 740 m up Psiloritis, is the capital of Cretan lyra music and antikristo lamb.
The south coast — Preveli, Plakias, Triopetra — is effectively a different island; you need a car.
Margarites has thrown pots for generations; buy ceramics there, not at the harbour.
No airport of its own: Chania is 73 km, Heraklion 81 km. Book whichever flight is cheaper.

Rethymno sits between Crete's two big cities and gets treated as a stop on the way to either. That is a mistake. The old town is the best-preserved Venetian and Ottoman quarter on the island: a working fortress on Paleokastro hill, a fountain that has poured through carved lion heads since 1626, a 27 m minaret above lanes where cafe tables lean against 400-year-old doorways. East of the marina the sand runs for roughly 13 km. And that is the province's less interesting coast.

Inland is where Rethymno earns its keep. Arkadi monastery, about 25 km southeast of town, is where hundreds of Cretans blew up their own gunpowder store in November 1866 rather than surrender to the Ottomans; the anniversary, 8 November, is still a solemn national date. Behind it the land climbs to Psiloritis, at 2,456 m the highest mountain in Crete. Anogia hangs off its northern face at 740 m, and shepherds still make cheese in round stone huts, the mitata, up on the Nida plateau.

Then there is the south. The road squeezes through the Kourtaliotiko gorge and drops you onto the Libyan Sea in under an hour: Plakias in its wide bay, a palm-lined river mouth at Preveli, and further east the near-empty sands of Triopetra and Agios Pavlos. Two coasts in one province, barely an hour apart, and most visitors never see the second one.

A hands-on cooking afternoon in a garden near Rethymno

Towns worth your time

Rethymno old town

Start on Paleokastro hill with the Fortezza, the star-shaped fortress the Venetians built between 1573 and 1580, then lose the map below it. The Rimondi fountain has run through three carved lion heads since 1626; the Neratze mosque, a Venetian church converted in 1657, keeps its 27 m minaret and now works as a music school. Arkadiou and Ethnikis Antistaseos are the shopping streets; Vernardou is the one with the folk-art museum in a 17th-century house. Skip the fish tavernas ringing the Venetian harbour — you are paying for the postcard, and the kitchens know it.

Anogia

A mountain town at 740 m on the north face of Psiloritis, and the home of Cretan music — Nikos Xylouris and Psarantonis were both born here. German troops razed the whole place in August 1944 as a reprisal for the resistance; what you see today was rebuilt, and the memory is worn openly. Come for lunch: lamb antikristo, whole sides staked around an open fire for hours. Then drive up to the Nida plateau at about 1,400 m, below the cave where, the story goes, Zeus was born.

Spili

The halfway stop on the road south, 30 km from town at 430 m, and worth more than the coffee break most people give it. Spring water pours constantly from a long row of Venetian lion-head spouts in the square, and locals still fill bottles there. Come mid-morning on your way to Preveli or Plakias and it is lovely. At midday in summer the coach parties arrive, the plane-tree cafes fill, and the village briefly stops being itself — time your stop around that.

The Amari valley

A green trough between Psiloritis and Mount Kedros, five to six hundred metres up, strung with villages that see almost no tourism. Thronos has 14th-century frescoes in its Panagia church and the remains of ancient Syvritos above it; Monastiraki has an important Minoan site, first dug during the German occupation in 1942; Gerakari grows the sweetest cherries on the island. The valley paid dearly for the resistance — in August 1944 German troops destroyed nine villages here and killed 164 people, reprisals usually tied to the Kreipe kidnapping, though historians still argue the point. Drive the loop slowly, buy cherries in early summer, and expect conversation in Greek.

The coast

Preveli

The famous one: a river mouth about 35 km south of town where the Megas Potamos flows out of the Kourtaliotiko gorge through a grove of native Theophrastus palms — the second-largest palm forest in Crete after Vai. The monastery above sheltered Allied soldiers in 1941, and around 200 of them were taken off this coast by British submarines. It is a steep walk down from the car park. In July and August come before 10am or after 4pm; at midday the lagoon is standing room only.

Triopetra and Agios Pavlos

Named for the three rocks standing offshore, Triopetra lies 52 km south of Rethymno down a paved road from Akoumia: long, mostly empty, with a couple of tavernas that also do rooms. Around Cape Melissa, Agios Pavlos adds sand dunes and a sheltered cove, and the Akoumianos river divides the two. This is the coast for people who think Preveli has become too popular — no beach bars, patchy phone signal, superb swimming.

Plakias

The south coast's one proper resort, set in a wide bay about 35 km from town, and still low-rise and unhurried by north-coast standards. The long beach shelves gently, and quieter coves sit a short drive east. It is the most sensible base for Preveli, 10 km away, and the gorges. Ignore anyone who says Plakias is spoiled; by Cretan resort standards it is restrained.

Rethymno town beach

Roughly 13 km of sand starting at the marina and running east, backed for much of its length by the hotel strip. Shallow, organised, easy with small children, and perfectly fine for an evening swim if you are staying in the old town. Just do not build the holiday around it — the same money buys you the Libyan Sea an hour south.

Eat and drink like you live here

This is mountain-food country. Antikristo — whole sides of lamb staked in a circle around, never over, a wood fire for hours — belongs to Anogia and the Psiloritis villages, and no version on a north-coast menu comes close. Gamopilafo, the buttery wedding rice cooked in meat broth, appears at every celebration; tsigariasto (slow-fried lamb or goat) and apaki (vinegar-cured smoked pork) fill out taverna menus. Cheese comes down from the mitata, the round stone huts on the Nida plateau. And order dakos everywhere: barley rusk, grated tomato, soft myzithra, a lot of olive oil.

Rethymno's sweet tooth is old and specific. Sarikopitakia are coiled fried cheese pies, named after the sariki headscarf, finished with honey. On Vernardou street the Hatziparaschos workshop still stretches filo pastry by hand — watch through the doorway. The province also does things with carob that the rest of Crete mostly does not: charoupomelo syrup, carob flour, carob rusks. Argyroupoli, built over ancient Lappa, farms trout in its spring water and has grown avocados since a local family planted the first 500 trees in 1984. Finish with Gerakari cherries in June and a raki you did not order but will receive anyway.

The practical part

Getting there

There is no Rethymno airport; the town sits between two. Chania airport is 73 km west, Heraklion 81 km east — book whichever flight is cheaper and budget about 90 minutes either way. From Chania airport a direct KTEL bus runs to Rethymno for around 8 euros; from Heraklion airport you first take a city bus to the central KTEL station, then an intercity coach. Both transfers are painless outside August. A hire car collected at the airport saves the double-handling.

Getting around

The north-coast KTEL buses between Chania, Rethymno and Heraklion are frequent and cheap, and fine if you only want the towns and Arkadi. Everything that makes this province special — the Amari valley, Anogia, the whole south coast — realistically needs a car. Southbound buses exist but run only a few times a day. In the old town, park outside the walls; the lanes are pedestrian and the wardens are not sentimental.

Where to base yourself

Sleep inside the old town in a Venetian-house conversion — you want to be within the walls after the day-trippers leave. For the south coast, Plakias covers it comfortably, while Triopetra suits people who want a taverna, a room and nothing else. Splitting a week between old town and south coast beats commuting over the mountains every day.

When to go

May and June are the sweet spot: the Amari valley is green after the spring cherry blossom, Gerakari cherries arrive in early summer, the Libyan Sea is already swimmable and the south-coast beaches are close to empty. July and August work if you stay south — the old town heaves and the 13 km town beach absorbs the hotel strip. September and early October stay warm, calmer and better value. On 8 November Arkadi holds its commemoration of the 1866 explosion, worth witnessing if you are nearby. In winter the strip shuts, but the university campus keeps the town itself alive.

Month-by-month notes for the whole island live on the planning page.

The honest note

The 13 km of beach east of town is an all-inclusive corridor, and the fish tavernas around the Venetian harbour trade on the view rather than the kitchen — eat two lanes back. Rethymno is Crete's most rewarding province if you treat the old town as a base and spend your days in the mountains and on the Libyan coast, and its dullest if you never leave the sunbed.