Chania

Chania sits on the north-west coast of Crete, the island's second city and the elegant capital of its western reaches. Its heart is the Venetian harbour, a long curving quay laid out under Venetian rule and closed by a graceful stone lighthouse, first built at the end of the sixteenth century and rebuilt in its present minaret-like form during the Egyptian period of the 1830s. Behind the waterfront lies one of the best-preserved old towns in Greece, a maze of narrow lanes where Venetian mansions, Ottoman houses and craft workshops lean together beneath washing lines and bougainvillea.

The old town rewards slow wandering. On the harbour stands the domed Mosque of the Janissaries, the oldest Ottoman building on the island, while the western mole is guarded by the Firkas Fortress and the Maritime Museum of Crete. Inland, the quarter of Splantzia keeps a quieter, more local feel around its plane-shaded square, and the covered Municipal Market, a cross-shaped hall of 1913, still trades in Cretan cheeses, herbs and raki. The leather-workers of Stivanadika lane and countless small tavernas fill the gaps between.

Chania is above all a base for the dramatic west. The Samaria Gorge, one of the longest walkable gorges in Europe, begins on the Omalos plateau to the south, ending at the coastal village of Agia Roumeli. To the north-west lie two of Crete's most photographed beaches, the pale lagoon of Balos and the pink-tinged sands of Elafonisi, along with the long reef-fringed strand of Falassarna. The White Mountains, snow-capped well into spring, rise behind the coastal plain.

The city is served by Chania International Airport on the Akrotiri peninsula and by overnight ferries from Piraeus that dock at nearby Souda. Late spring and early autumn are ideal, with warm seas, walkable temperatures and the harbour at its most convivial. Chania suits travellers who want a handsome, atmospheric town on the doorstep of gorges, mountains and some of the finest beaches in the Mediterranean.