Heraklion has gone by five names, including Candy, in its long history
Crete's biggest city has been called the Castle of the Moat, Chandax, Candia, the Big Castle and finally Heraklion. In English, its Venetian name once came out as Candy. Each name marks a new ruler, and together they trace a site where people have lived since at least 7000 BCE.
The oldest name reaches back to Knossos, the great Minoan palace now on the city's southern edge. Knossos had a harbour here from the Early Minoan period, a port the Greeks later named Heracleium after the hero Heracles. After the Minoans faded, the area stagnated, and in early Byzantine times its coast was plagued by pirates and bandits.
In 824 CE, exiles from Muslim Spain seized Crete, made the site their capital and dug a protective moat, calling the place Rabd al-Khandaq, the Castle of the Moat. Greek speakers turned that into Chandax. The emirate let pirates shelter in the harbour to prey on Byzantine shipping, until Nikephoros Phokas, a general who later became emperor, took the city in March 961 after a long siege.
Venice bought the city in 1204 as part of a tangled deal surrounding the Fourth Crusade. Renamed Candia, which in English became Candy, it was ringed with enormous walls up to 40 metres thick in places, with seven bastions and a harbour fortress. Venetian settlers and Renaissance influences fostered a flowering of letters and art known as the Cretan Renaissance. Those walls then endured an Ottoman siege lasting 21 years, from 1648 to 1669, the longest in history up to that time. Under Ottoman rule the Greek population called it Megalo Kastro, the Big Castle, and its harbour silted up.
The ancient name Heraklion was revived in the late 19th century, during the international occupation of Crete, and the city joined Greece in 1913. It became capital of Crete again in 1971. Today its airport, named after the local writer Nikos Kazantzakis, is the second busiest in Greece, and Knossos draws more visitors than any Greek site except the Parthenon.
Source: Heraklion
