Iraklion, the first stop on our magnificent journey through the island of Crete, is one of the larger cities in Greece and is, from my brief aquaitance with it, a very ugly place. It does have some interesting things in it: this is the grave of Nikos Kazantzakis, the Cretan writer who I mentioned in my last post. It says "I hope for nothing, I fear nothing, I am free," or some approximation of that in Modern Greek.
This may actually be one of the ugliest fountains I have ever seen in my life, but the amount of ugly is so great that it's actually hysterical. I think the Venetians made this fountain at some point during their long occupation of the island out of bits of ancient things that they could find.
The famous fountain of four lions, also made by the Venetians. Wandering through the big cities of northern Crete, you often feel like you are not actually in Greece- due to lengthy occupations by both the Venetians and the Turks, many cities have a very interesting mix of architectural styles.
The little column that you can see at the right side of the picture is the remains of a minaret from when this church was a mosque. Many churches on the island were made into mosques and then back into churches. This was more prominent in the other cities we later visited.
And just in case you forget that this was a Venetian territory- the winged lion is everywhere.
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