Rethymnon: Tale of a Town?

In January many of us were privileged to be given an inspirational walking tour of Rethymnon conducted by local expert and guide, Ioanna Kalypso Glypti. This was a great excursion which gave us plenty to think about. Thank you to Ioanna and also to Anna Capernaros for helping to organise this! Thanks also to Peter Winterink for providing us with some of the photos.

It doesn’t matter how long you have lived in a beautiful place and how much you think you might know, there will always be something new to discover. And, when living and working in Rethymnon one finds that on a day-to-day basis the beautiful monuments tend to fade into the background and get taken for granted. More often than not, when walking in town us residents are just concerned about getting from A to B, rather than focusing on our surroundings. So this was a wonderful opportunity for us to see our home through fresh eyes. Ioanna’s love and enthusiasm for the city shone through, here we feature just a few snapshots from her guided walk through the town.

The Early Days

We all met outside the Catholic church - which, having been built towards the end of the 19th Century, is a relatively recent addition to the town (possibly more about this later) and then walked towards the harbour. Once at the harbour, Ioanna gave us an insightful overview of the area. As Ioanna explained, historically Crete has had very mixed fortunes. Over the centuries there have been times of prosperity and international prominence which have been interspersed with periods of great hardship and obscurity. Our knowledge of Crete’s history is patchy and full of contradictions for various reasons. Perhaps the view that history is more often than not a matter of negotiation than of establishing hard facts may hold some weight. For example, the Crete of the Minoan age has received a lot of attention from international researchers and has been extensively documented. But on the other hand, after the collapse of the Minoan civilisation, the Classical and Hellenistic periods have often been portrayed as times when ’nothing much happened’ on Crete. However, this may be as much to do with the lack of available written material than it is to do with lack of actual ‘history’. Rethymnon (Rithymna) at one point during this era produced its own coinage and the motif of two leaping dolphins remains an important symbol of the town to this day.

Typically, the Romans came, saw, conquered and went away again. Gortys, on the Messara plain was an important administrative centre for the region; but far less is known about Rethymnon itself during these times. During the 1st Byzantine era there was an increase in written documentation which is when we start to learn more about what was happening around town. Rethymnon, though, was still perceived as insignificant. It had no natural harbour of consequence so traders and invaders preferred to turn their attentions to Candia (Heraklion) and Hania. It is not until the later part of the 13th Century that Rethymnon started to come into its own.

From the Sea to the Mountains

As we also learned from Ioanna, what we know about the past lives of people from the Rethymnon region depends to a considerable extent on the type of area that we are focusing on.

At sea level, trade from the east in Medieval times began to have a huge impact in the larger settlements (including Rethymnon) bringing spices, gold and gems, different cultural mores, fashions and even some new music! Raids from pirates aroused concern and highlighted the need to fortify and protect. However, a few kilometres away, in the mountain villages, you were in a different world. Inaccessibility in terms of transport meant that in one sense time stood still, but in another sense life continued in the way it always should do without fuss or bother.

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