Chania Unwrapped: Venetian Alleyways and Christmas Lights

There are places where Christmas arrives with heaving crowds of shoppers and blizzards of lights. Where advertising jingles clamour - where Santas seem to appear on every corner…

And then there’s Chania - quieter, stranger, full of enchantment. Half Christmas fairy tale, half gothic Venetian fantasy. A magical place where every turn feels like the door of an advent calendar opening, revealing something new and wonderful…

When Craig and I arrive at our hotel for our first pre-Christmas trip in ten years, the sun is already turning the buildings of the Old Town golden. By the time we venture out for dinner, dusk has settled over the rooftops and Chania is slipping into its second skin. The labyrinthine backstreets lean towards us, drawing us along, as if whispering: come on in - there’s more to see…

In the old Venetian harbour, brass hand-shaped door knockers tap gently in the sea air. Sandbags are heaped protectively in doorways against the winter tides, and dark waves slap at the stone quay. The air shimmers with seasalt. Old shutters sigh and creak. The night wind coils through filigree balconies and teases the fragrance of cinnamon and warm vanilla out of shop doorways.

On the curve of the harbour, the old Küçük Hasan Pasha Mosque rises like something smuggled out of the Arabian Nights, its rose-gold dome catching the lights of the towering Christmas tree behind it. The Egyptian lighthouse is lit in firework colours against the night sky, and outside the seafront tavernas, enormous Nutcracker soldiers stand sentinel, their painted eyes gleaming with a mischief that suggests they might roam the alleyways after midnight.

After a volta around the breakwater, Craig and I head to the taverna Tamam, tucked away on Zampeliou. Steps from the street lead down into this fifteenth-century former Ottoman bath-house - a vaulted, split-level room suffused with the scent of rosemary and cheese fried in a hazelnut crust. We linger over tomato and courgette fritters, warm bread, vegetables stuffed with fragrant rice, beef and leeks oven-baked in a rich, aromatic sauce. With good company and wine, it’s easy to imagine this subterranean room as the site of old gossip, negotiations and secrets. I find myself glancing at the upper ledges, half expecting the ghost of a former patron to settle there. Another door to the magic of this old place opens.

Image from ‘Tamam’ Facebook Page

Morning brings clear light and quieter streets. We thread narrow alleyways to the limits of the great city walls and beyond, hugging the shoreline as we continue on to the new purpose-built Archaeological Museum in Chalepa. When we try to pay, the guardian assures us that we have arrived on a ‘free Sunday’ - another off-season gift. (The first, and sometimes the third, Sunday of each winter month are free.)

Inside, the air feels different. Gold jewellery glimmers in display cases. Clay figurines and toys lie together, the grave goods of a child so young it stills the breath in your throat to think about it. There are recreations of bronze-age rock tombs, restored Roman mosaic floors, a Minoan lustral bath - and a headstone from ancient Aptera, its translation lamenting a lost wife: “Now no more… I shout, but she does not hear… I hold onto this love. I will continue to be who I was, but I can do nothing. She flew straight away like the wind.” Another door to a wonder, but a solemn one.

In a video display, the great earthquake that devastated Crete in 365 CE plays out above the reconstructed ruins of the so-called House of the Miser. Two bodies were found in its cellar beside three hoards of gold. As I watch, I remember the earthquake that shook our home in Kritsa earlier this year - how Craig and I, jolted awake in the early hours, made all the wrong moves in our scramble to get outside. I feel unexpectedly sad for these victims whose final, desperate moment defines them now.

On our stroll back towards the Old Town, we stumble upon the Chalepa Hotel, once the British Consulate and headquarters of the British Archaeological School in the early 1900s, Crete’s ‘Golden Age’ of excavation. I’m thrilled at this chance discovery. I recently researched and wrote a magazine story about the pioneering British palaeontologist Dorothea Bate. She was the Natural History Museum London’s first female scientist, discovered the fossilised remains of the world’s smallest mammoth in Crete in 1904 - and she was right here. She travelled to this building to stay with the British Consul and his wife, an Italian princess. I imagine dignitaries in the corridors, the soft tap of typewriter keys, the rustle of long skirts - the quiet tension as Cretan officials moved to save the island’s precious treasures from slipping abroad.

I gabble enthusiastically at the hotel manager about the building’s history as he comes out to welcome us - and then Craig and I sit in the beautiful, sheltered garden, sipping coffee and eating homemade biscuits in the winter sunshine - marvelling at the way Chania feels different every time we return knowing more of its stories. Time slows. Another door to wonder opens up.

Beyond the consular walls, the sky shifts to a deep, clear indigo. We follow the coastal promenade to the natural swimming pool carved into the rocks, where, even this close to Christmas, the water glows azure. In a sheltered spot above it stands the powerful Airforce Memorial, The Fall of Icarus, honouring the airmen lost in the Battle of Crete. Everywhere we go, it’s getting easier to decode signs and read inscriptions.

“This place,” I tell Craig, “It feels like it’s letting us in. I don’t feel so much like a tourist.”

And this, more than anything, is the gift of Chania in these quieter weeks before Christmas. It invites us to slip deeper and to fall in love - not just with its postcard attractions, but with the real town. With all of the layers of its stories and history. With the quiet magic that lingers long after the last glimmer of sun has faded behind the minarets, and the last sleek, black cat has melted into the old town’s maze of shadows.

We resolve that we will come back again at Christmas next year.

Because in Chania -
there is always one more door to open.
One more story.
One more reason to return.

If you’ve been enjoying Claire in Crete, you may also like my award-winning short story, Ann Hilder - a mystery inspired by the work of the artist LS Lowry and his shadowy ‘godchild’ Ann. The story is published as a small book and ebook, available on Amazon at https://amzn.eu/d/bMidwmh

‘Claire In Crete’ publishes new articles every two weeks about Crete’s people, history, culture, places, walks, wildlife and more. It’s free to subscribe to receive each new post directly, and they’re all public, so do feel free to share.

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