Frangokastello

The Venetians, then masters of Crete, raised the fortress between 1371 and 1374 on the coastal plain about twelve kilometres east of Chora Sfakion: a garrison to impose order on the rebellious Sfakia region, to deter pirates and to protect Venetian nobles and their properties. They named it the Castle of St Nikitas, after the church nearby. The locals, who never saw it in a positive light, contemptuously dubbed it Frangokastello, the castle of the Franks — the word they used for all Catholic foreigners — and the name eventually stuck, adopted in the end by the Venetians themselves.

Local lore holds that when the soldiers and builders arrived on the fertile plain, Sfakians led by six Patsos brothers from the nearby settlement of Patsianos pulled down each night what had gone up during the day. The Venetians were forced to bring in additional troops, and the brothers were betrayed, arrested and hanged.

Frangokastello is a plain rectangle with a tower at each corner, its walls vertical and relatively thin, built on principles of fortification that pre-dated gunpowder. The Venetian bastion system — heavy walls with a sloped outer face to absorb cannon fire — spread through Crete in the first half of the 16th century, but was applied mainly to the more strategically important forts of the northern coast, such as the Fortezza at Rethymno and the Koules at Heraklion. Frangokastello was rebuilt in phases: between 1593 and 1597 under the provveditore generale Nicolò Donà, and again in 1645. The buildings inside the walls, and the battlements, date from the Ottoman occupation.

In 1770 the Cretan captain Ioannis Vlachos, better known as Daskalogiannis, was at Frangokastello, and accounts differ on how: some have him seizing the castle from its Ottoman commanders, others have him captured there by Turkish forces. All agree on what followed — he was tortured and executed at Heraklion.

In May 1828 Hatzimichalis Dalianis, a Greek patriot from Epirus trying to carry the War of Independence from the mainland to Crete, occupied the castle with hundreds of Sfakiots and Epirotes, put at seven hundred men by one account. The Ottoman forces of Mustafa Naili Pasha besieged them and the defenders were massacred; many of the Turks were then killed in turn by rebel ambushes launched from the local gorges. Naili Pasha destroyed the castle afterwards so that the rebellious locals could not use it again, and repaired it later.

Around the anniversary of the battle each May, around dawn, shadows resembling armed men are said to move across the flat ground towards the fortress; they are called the Drosoulites, the dew-men, and tradition holds them to be the soldiers who died there. The explanations that carry most scientific weight treat them as a mirage or an optical illusion.

The castle was rebuilt once more between 1866 and 1869, during the Cretan revolt, and its main gate on the south side stands in a 19th-century reconstruction. Above that gate a relief of the lion of St Mark, the emblem of the Venetian Republic, survives, along with the arms of prominent Venetian families. Frangokastello is protected as an archaeological site, in the municipality of Sfakia; the plain around it carries scattered tourist accommodation, the area's relative remoteness having discouraged major development.