4 Best Sights in Agios Nikolaos, Crete

This interesting little museum showcases exquisite weavings and embroidered pieces, along with walking sticks, tools, and other artifacts from everyday rural life in Crete.

This delightful village on a mountainside above Ayios Nikolaos is renowned for its weaving tradition, narrow lanes wide enough for only a donkey to pass, and whitewashed houses that surround a large, shady town square filled with café tables that afford views down green valleys planted with olive trees to the sea. The woven tablecloths and other wares are hard to miss—villagers drape them over every usable surface and hang them from storefronts and even trees. The lovely Byzantine church here, Panayia Kera, has an unusual shape, with three naves supported by heavy triangular buttresses. Built in the early years of Venetian occupation, it contains some of the liveliest and best-preserved medieval frescoes on the island, painted in the 13th century.

This ancient city in the hills just above Ayios Nikolaos was built by the Doric Greeks in a dip between two rocky peaks and named for the mother of Artemis and Apollo and her image appears on coins found at the site. Lato reached its peak in the 3rd century BC, but was gradually abandoned, although its port near latterday Ayios Nikolaos was in use during Roman times. Make your way over the expanse of ancient masonry to the far end of the ongoing excavations for one of the best views in Crete: on a clear day you can see Santorini, 100 km (62 miles) across the Cretan sea, as well as inland across a seemingly endless panorama of mountains and valleys.