The calendar of central Crete moves between two poles: a monastery built inside a gorge 30km from Rethymno that draws the largest September pilgrimage in the region, and a mountain village on Psiloritis - birthplace of the musician who carried the Cretan lyra to the rest of Greece.
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May - September
Panigiria run from May to September, and the season peaks at Dekapentavgoustos - the Dormition, on 15 August - when most villages hold their feast. Each programme is set close to its own saint's day, so the list fills late and empties out of season.
The monastery of Panagia Charakiani - built into the rock at the edge of the village of Bali, 30km from Rethymno - holds the most significant September 8 pilgrimage in the region. The icon is held to be miracle-working. In earlier generations pilgrims put up makeshift shelters of cane, old umbrellas and bedsheets near the church and stayed for up to two weeks before the feast; the habit of arriving early and staying on site survives in modified form. Preveli monastery, on the south coast above the Libyan Sea, holds its summer feast with traditional Cretan music; the monastery was an escape point for hundreds of Allied soldiers evacuated by submarine after the Battle of Crete in 1941, a history Cretans place on the same level as its religious significance.
Anogeia, at 750 metres on Psiloritis, is the cultural reference point for the festive tradition of Rethymno. It is the birthplace of Nikos Xylouris - the 'Archangel of Crete' - whose recordings took the lyra and the rizitika from a local scale to a national one. Anogeia was burned by German troops in 1944 in reprisal for the abduction of General Kreipe; locals consider that history formative for the village's character. Above Anogeia, the Yakinthia (late July / early August) are held at a stone chapel at 1,260 metres, with a different theme each year, pairing Cretan tradition with other Mediterranean musics. Improvised mantinades - fifteen-syllable rhyming couplets composed on the spot and traded between singers, with the audience judging the aim - are the living art of the Rethymno panigiri.
On September 8 (the Nativity of the Virgin), at the monastery near the village of Bali, 30km from Rethymno. The icon is held to be miracle-working and the feast draws the largest pilgrimage in the area. Pilgrims once built cane shelters near the church and stayed for up to two weeks beforehand.
Nikos Xylouris (1936-1980) from Anogeia was the lyra player whose early-1970s recordings with the composer Giannis Markopoulos took Cretan music from a local scale to national recognition. Anogeia - burned by German troops in 1944 in reprisal for the abduction of General Kreipe - and the music are inseparable in Cretan memory. His brother, Psarantonis, remains an active master of the Cretan lyra.
