Ierapetra is the southernmost town not only in Greece but also in Europe. It is located on the shores of the Libyan Sea and has only about 16, 000 residents. Cretans call this town a “serene” one: there is there no hustle and bustle of modern life.

The district of Ierapetra offers cleanest and most beautiful coast line of the whole island, and is included in the international directory “50 most beautiful places in Southern Europe”.

Today, Ierapetra is a popular resort with a growing developed infrastructure. There is there a lot of every possible hotel, shops, restaurants, bars, clubs, most of which are concentrated on the coast. The town can rightly be considered as a Greek centre of winter recreation. In the summer, the temperatures here reach the highest mark among all the Cretan resorts.

Ierapetra is very old: it is several thousand years old. It consists of two parts: the Old town of Kato Mera, and the New one is Pano Mera – with modern buildings. The main attractions are in the old town, and its appearance with narrow lanes and two-story houses had almost not changed over the past decades. The main attraction of this place and at the same time its hallmark is a Venetian fortress of Kales (a sea fort). This is a quite powerful structure – by looking at it, one can evaluate engineering and construction capability of ancient architects. The first official mention of this site dates back to the beginning of the XIV century. There is there also the famous “Napoleon house”, where Napoleon stayed in 1798 for one night (for more see pages 2 and 3).

Ierapetra is an exceptionally clean area on Crete from point of the ecology and most fertile in the whole of Greece: almost all locals are actively engaged in the cultivation of vegetables in greenhouses, and export them all over Europe. This production secures to the Municipality of Ierapetra a place among the richest ones of the island.

Come, and you will not regret!

April, 2017