Introduction
 Sketch of Suda Bay east of Khania by Monanni. (1622) |
Venetian Khania, the capital of the island under Venetian rule, of course received much attention from Venetian writers and other travellers of the period (as we saw in Unit 2 Session 1 Lesson 2).
The study of the archaeology has included work on the paintings, buildings and pottery of the period (refer to Unit 2 Session 3 for further details). The following account will mark with an asterisk (*) those buildings that will feature in the synoptic chart in Session 4 at the end of this unit.
In this session we focus on Khania as the finest representative of this epoch. We touch briefly on the history of the site before the Venetians arrived, but mainly we look at how the Venetians influenced the architecture of Khania, and what is still visible today.