Crete by Barry Unsworth Page A

have escaped mutilation. The Christians pulled down the minaret and surmounted the dome with a cross, but in the small courtyard in front of the church the unpretentious Ottoman fountain still keeps its place, with its exquisitely carved stone, its channel for the washing of feet, and outlets for running water—always running water for the Muslim lustration. The fountain is beautiful, and it has survived by virtue of its modest dimensions—there is a lot to be said for keeping low to the ground.
    The churches of Crete can be a guide to the labyrinth of history even when they have long ceased to be buildings at all. The Monastery of San Francesco exists no longer, but it was once the most imposing Catholic foundation on the island, built by the Venetians in the first century of their rule. Now Iraklion’s Archaeological Museum covers the site. But it has not vanished altogether. While it was still being used as a mosque, the severe earthquake of 1856 brought most of it down, but Turkish troops rescued the door frame and built it into their barracks, for reasons not clear, perhaps in the hope of Allah’s blessing, though it was a Christian door frame originally, having been donated to the church in 1410 by Pope Alexander V, a Cretan named Petros Philargos, who, according to some sources, had previously been a monk at the monastery. There were no less than three popes at that time and considerable doubt as to who was St. Peter’s legitimate heir. Alexander died after only ten months in office, a mysterious death—many believed he had been poisoned by his successor. The barracks crumbled away in their turn, but the door survived: It now serves as northern entrance to the law court on Dikeossinis Street and must have witnessed the passage of a good many malefactors. Five hundred years and a mystery or two, all in the span of a door frame.
    The Church of Agia Ekaterini on the square of the same name, which we arrived at going westward down Kalokerinou toward the Chania Gate, has been put to a use which—like the former mosque inside the fortress walls in Rethymnon and the former Church of San Francesco in Chania, now a museum—makes very good sense indeed. Formally a celebrated monastic academy and art school, it is now a museum of religious art, housing a collection of Cretan icons it would be difficult to match elsewhere, in particular several by Michalis Damaskinos, a contemporary of El Greco, also Cretan, less famous than him but a very considerable artist, one of the first Cretan painters to introduce elements of Renaissance humanism into the severely formal tradition of Byzantine icon and fresco painting.
    Agia Pelagia, a few miles west of Iraklion, is where a lot of people choose to stay who want to combine a beach holiday with trips to Knossos and various other Minoan sites in the vicinity of the city. The phrase “a lot of people” seems like an understatement in view of the multitudes that descend on the region at the onset of summer. The headland above the village is more or less entirely staked out by huge hotel complexes, places where you can easily get lost—it might take you a quarter of an hour to walk through the beautiful gardens from your chalet or villa or bungalow to the nearest place where you can get a cup of coffee, or find someone to tell you where a cup of coffee is to be got.
    This is the exclusive, expensive face of tourism in Crete. The other face can be found below, in the continuous string of bars, discos, tavernas that front the narrow strip of beach and extend inland to a wilderness of car-rental agencies, fast-food eating places, supermarkets, and a jumble of apartment houses and small hotels and half-finished building projects. The roads designed to link these places haven’t had time yet to catch up. They too are often half finished, sometimes hardly started, sometimes ending in piles of rubble or vacant lots. The pace of development outstrips the