Chania Region

Most visitors see Chania for four days and never go further. The regional unit is about four times that size and rewards being driven through.

Twenty minutes inland from the city, heading through Platanias and Apokoronas, the character changes completely: the coast road gives way to olive terraces, and the terraces to the first serious bends of the White Mountains. By the Omalos plateau the light has gone hard and blue, and it becomes clear that almost everything Crete actually eats comes out of this basin.

Samaria Gorge is the reason people come, and it deserves the attention, but it is only sixteen kilometres long and most people walk it in six hours in high summer. The rest of the region is worth more of the day. Sfakia lies further west down a road with no expectations attached to it, where men still drink raki in a handful of tavernas and women still carry water on donkeys up from the shore. The kri-kri — the wild goat that gave Crete its zoological name — survives on the high slopes above the gorge, and will not be seen unless somebody takes you.

At dusk the coast lays itself out: the brown sand of Sougia to the east, the low headland of Gramvousa to the north, the horizon going flat and empty to the west. That is the Chania Region, and it is much larger and stranger than the four days most visitors spend in Chania town.

The Chania regional unit is roughly a quarter of Crete and takes its name from its capital, but the capital is only its newest and least characteristic settlement. The oldest sites are inland: the White Mountains hold late Minoan and early Greek mountain sanctuaries, and the plateau above Sfakia has been terraced and grazed for centuries. Tarra, near modern Kallikratis, was a city-state in its own right in Classical Crete and struck its own coins. Under the Venetians, who held Chania from 1252 to 1645, the region was organised around a chain of fortresses, of which the island fortress of Gramvousa is the most photogenic and the island of Gavdos the most remote. The Venetians also rebuilt the harbour at Chania, which had already served as a Byzantine anchorage. After 1898, when Chania became the capital of the short-lived Cretan State, the region was the political centre of Crete until the union with Greece in 1913. In 1941 the Battle of Crete was fought across these mountains, and German reprisals against civilian villages scarred communities that had barely recovered from the war of 1897. Since then the region's story has been agricultural as much as historical: the Apokoronas and Platanias plains and the Messara of neighbouring Heraklion are the olive-growing heart of Crete, and Sfakia and Kandanos retained a dialect and a set of customs well into the twentieth century.

The Chania Region has three distinct coasts and they do not suit the same beachgoer. On the north and west the water is shallow, turquoise and often sandy: Falassarna, west of the city, is a run of four sandy coves with an ancient submerged breakwater, and the north cove is the organised one with sunbeds and a taverna. Farther west, Elafonisi is a long pink-sand beach split by a shallow lagoon and joined to a small island by a sandbar, protected as a Natura 2000 site and very crowded in August. Balos, on the northwestern tip, is a shallow turquoise lagoon with white sand, reached by a rough track from Kissamos or by boat.

The south coast is the opposite character: pebbly, sheltered, steep-sided and much quieter. Sougia has a long shingle beach under tamarisks and a small ferry pier; Agia Roumeli, at the mouth of the Samaria Gorge, has pebbles, cold clear water and the mountains rising straight behind. If you want sand and silence in one place, this region does not promise it — the sandy beaches are all on the exposed side, and the quiet beaches are all shingle.

The region's food is the inland Cretan diet rather than the seafood of the coast. Dakos is the plate to order first: a barley rusk soaked in olive oil under grated tomato, mizithra, capers and oregano. Sfakia's own dish is a local one — a bowl of horta, the boiled wild greens, with the region's own pork and its own raki, which is why Sfakian raki has become a byword across the island.

Look for graviera aged in the mountain villages, xinomyzithra for the sharper cheeses, and apaki, the vinegar-and-herb cured pork that is smoked for days. On the coast the fish is simple: barbouni, tsipoura and octopus, grilled over coals with nothing but oil, lemon and oregano. Buy oil from any of the old press buildings in Apokoronas; the Koroneiki olives from this basin are the reason Cretan oil is the reason Cretan oil is famous.

April to June and September to October are the best months, when the mountains are green or dusted with the first snow, the gorges are walkable and the beaches have not filled. July and August are hot, dry and crowded on the exposed coasts, though Sfakia and the south-coast beaches remain bearable. Winter is mild on the coast but the White Mountains get real snow and the Samaria Gorge can be closed after heavy rain, so check conditions before you set out for the plateau.

Chania is served by its own airport, about 14 km from the town, and by Souda, the island's main Piraeus ferry port, 6.5 km south-east of the centre. The region's other sea gate is Kissamos, 40 km west of Chania, which takes ferries from Piraeus, Gythio and Kythira as well as the boats for Balos and Elafonisi. Inland, the Northern Road Axis (National Road 90) runs east from Chania as a dual carriageway, with short motorway-standard bypasses at Chania, Rethymnon and Heraklion rather than a continuous motorway.

Do the Samaria Gorge from the Omalos end, on foot, not as a drive-through: the road to Xyloskalo is impassable to ordinary cars and was closed to public vehicles altogether after the 2019 wildfire damage. Start by 07:00, carry at least two litres of water, and turn back at the Iron Gates if the river is high — it has killed hikers in recent seasons. Get to the Omalos plateau early; the car park fills and the shuttle to the trailhead is timed to the gates closing.

Driving west from Chania, fill up in the city rather than running on to Sfakia. The coast road is good; the roads down to Sougia and Loutro are narrow and slow, and Loutro has no cars at all. Balos is not served by a proper road — the track is long and rough, and the boat from Kissamos is the sensible option in August.

For the kri-kri, do not expect to see one. The animal is genuinely rare and the small herds are not in the reserve area; local guides know the specific slopes that season and the sightings are never guaranteed. And go to Sfakia for two nights rather than one afternoon: the drive in is the point, and the place is too far to appreciate from a car park.