Why go
Read this period to understand why Heraklion’s story does not jump directly from Minoan Knossos to Venetian Candia. Nikephoros Phokas captured Chandax, and the city was destroyed and rebuilt under Byzantine control. Little of that episode is as obvious on a walk as the later Venetian walls, making the historical link especially useful.
The full story
Crete belonged to the eastern Roman world before the Emirate of Crete took the island in the ninth century. Chandax then became the emirate’s fortified capital. In 961, Byzantine forces led by Nikephoros Phokas besieged and captured the city. The conquest was violent: accounts describe the town being looted and burned before it was rebuilt under Byzantine control. The city retained the name Chandax, even as its political place changed again. Byzantine rule continued until the upheavals following the Fourth Crusade brought Crete into Venetian hands in the early thirteenth century. This chapter matters because the visible old city is dominated by later Venetian construction. The walls and harbour works a visitor sees today do not by themselves explain the earlier moated capital or the reconquest that separated it from Candia. Reading the sequence makes those names refer to changes in power and urban fabric, rather than to interchangeable labels for one unchanging place.