Welcome to Falassarna!

Falasarna/Phalasarna (Greek: Φαλάσαρνα) is an ancient Greek harbor town on the northwest coast of Crete. The currently visible remains of the city were built around 335 BCE and include several imposing sandstone towers and bastions, with hundreds of meters of fortification walls protecting the town and a closed harbor. The harbour is surrounded by quays with mooring stones, and connected to the sea through two artificial channels. There is also a small acropolis above the city, which predates most of the surviving ruins. Most of these structures were revealed by excavations that began in 1986 and are ongoing.
Round sandstone tower at military harbor of Phalasarna
Stone quay and mooring stones from military harbor of Phalasarna

Today Falasarna is an agricultural area and tourist attraction. The valley is filled with olive groves and greenhouses cultivating mainly tomatoes and cucumbers. The seaside has large sandy beaches and crystal clear waters that are popular both with residents of the province of Chania and foreign visitors.
[edit] Ancient history

Falasarna was mentioned by ancient historians and geographers Scylax, Strabo, Polybius, Livy, Pliny, Dionysius Kalliphontis, the anonymous geographer known as Stadiasmus, and Stephanos of Byzantium. Falasarna was known to be at war with another Cretan city, Kydonia, in the third century BC. (Hogan, 2008)

The location of the city was then forgotten, and Falasarna appears in Venetian records only as a lost city. The site was rediscovered in the 19th century by British explorers Robert Pashley and Captain T. A. B. Spratt. Spratt, of the Royal Navy), noted in 1859 that the former harbour of the deserted site was now 100 yards from the sea and that the ancient sea coast must have risen at least twenty four feet. Modern excavation has confirmed this judgment. Radiocarbon dating of fossil algae along the ancient sea level mark on the cliffs around Falasarna estimates the sudden sea level change at some time more than sixteen centuries ago. A probable event was the great earthquake and tsunami of 21 July A.D. 365, which wreaked catastrophic damage on all the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean and was recorded by Ammianus Marcellinus, Theophanes, and Georgios Monachos.

But four centuries previously Falasarna had already been destroyed by the hand of man. The inhabitants were notorious pirates, and when in 68-67 BC the Romans sent forces to eliminate piracy from the eastern Mediterranean they stormed Falasarna, blocked its harbor with massive masonry, and destroyed the whole city, probably killing its citizens. No ancient sources testify to these events, but evidence of burning and the harbor blockage itself suggest the tentative conclusions of the excavators, Elpida Hadjidaki of the Greek Archaeological Service, and Frank Frost, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

More probably Falasarna was partly re-inhabited around 1450BC, after the giant tsunami caused by the volcanic island Thyra/Santorini explosion, and a major earthquake lifted western Crete between 6 and 9 meters, turning the all important Falasarna harbour into a useless dry-dock. Before that catastrophic event Falasarna was the only port on Kriti/Crete from which one could sail on eyesight to the Peloponnese following Bodikonisos, Antikythira and Kythira.

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