Greece’s fifth largest city has plenty to offer. As with Athens, you may to take time to get acquainted with it. The city has great character and a treasure house of an archaeological museum containing some of the world’s most renowned antiquities.

Iraklio has been settled since Neolithic times, and it flourished as the harbour for the Minona centre at Knossos, 5 km to the south. The Venetians conquered it in the thirteenth century and made it their capital for the Aegean, building a fort to protect the harbour.

On the southern side of the harbour is another Venetian structure, the Arsenal, constructed in the sixteenth century as the place where the shipping fleet for the Aegean was both built and repaired. Iraklio’s magnificent city walls are from the same period.