Minoans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Venetians and Turks left their traces in Chania, a real melting pot of different peoples and cultures. The violent sunrise, the ancient Cretan light evokes the memories of the past; the vast sea reflects the sky and exposes the old lighthouse resembling a minaret in the Old Harbour. The Yali Tzami, Firka the fortress, Neoria, the labyrinthine alleys running in between the Venetian buildings – they all give a color to a city that is truly a unique cultural monument. Each element of the Old Harbour of Chania is a timeless aesthetic and cultural value. And as a whole they determine the particular charm of this fortified city. A castled city that was always open to the different. Multinational in its history, multicultural in its attitude and cosmopolitan in its character. An eccentric southern metropolis, which has not succumbed to the mainstream and has firmly maintained its oriental and mysterious character, even now that you cannot hear the muezzin at the mosque of Küçük Hassan Pasha. There is no coincidence that Chania was designated as the “Venice of the East”. Chania and its Venetian Port is not only a provincial town. It’s more a city in a big city that has built its culture on the footsteps of nations which sometimes courted it and sometimes raped it. The Old Town of Chania is not only a part of the history, is the History. With the remains of Mosques, Turkish baths, Capuchin and Dominicans monasteries, the city tries to combine the influence of Venetian, Arabic and Turkish culture with the Greek reality and more specifically with the Cretan reality.

Beside its contradictions, this place has a special ability to keep the balance and to impose the measure. Also, its population always manages to find its own balance between wisdom and extroverted spirit, perhaps because here everyone is able to be himself. And that’s make Chania so special.

The magnetism of the city and its personality facilitate the human contact and maintain the illusion that “for so long time well prepared” this city is open to the new … Kydonia, Chania, la Canée is your paradise, your whole world!