Santrivani

At the beginning of the century, there used to be a main square in the heart of what today is called the old town of Chania. As the square was located in the centre of what then used to be the entire city of Chania, its name always carried symbolic importance. During the years of the Cretan State, it was called Mavrovounioi Square to honour the gendarmerie unit from Montenegro (Mavrovounio in Greek) which had replaced the police force sent to the island by the Sultan. Later it was named Eleftherios Venizelos Square.

Due to its location, this square played a major role in the distribution of the city’s most essential good, water. As early as the Venetian period, there was a spring there decorated with lion heads and, during the Ottoman rule, there was a large water fountain on one side which supplied the residents with water. To commemorate the historic presence of the water element, today there is a decorative fountain in the centre of the square. The locals call this square Santrivani, from the Greek word ‘sintrivani’ which means fountain.

Santrivani has always been a popular meeting spot and even hosted the city’s town hall for a while. Throughout the 20^th century, the square and the surrounding area housed stores, entertainment venues, and hotels. A lot of the early photographs of the city were taken on this square and show that this central public space was crowded with people over the first half of the century. Some of these people had just come to the island and some would soon leave it.

In the first photograph from the beginning of the century, we can see a snapshot from the arrival of the High Commissioner Prince George at the square. The citizens who are watching the event represent the local society at the time: members of the bourgeois and the working class wearing traditional or European attire. We can tell the Christians from the Muslims due to their different traditional outfits. There were also European citizens who were in Crete as military and administrative personnel. The signs on the shops have both Christian and Muslim names: Ar. B. Spyridaki and Suleiman Tzezaerlaki. Most of them are written in two languages, Greek and French, to accommodate the city’s temporary residents.

The traveller Trevor Bati wrote about the square in the early 1910s: ‘The town’s small square is one of the most attractive places. I don’t know anywhere else in Europe where you can study such a wide variety of people. Greeks, Cretans, Cretan Turks, Arabs, Turks, Egyptians, Albanians wearing the traditional fustanella [Balkan kilt] and all sorts of Levantines come and go in this small square. When the island was occupied by the Great Powers, the faces and the uniforms of Russian, Italian, French, and English soldiers and sailors added a new element to the scene. For a few hours every day, people carrying water, wine, or olive oil, bootblacks, candy sellers and coffee shop owners with their trays filled with coffee cups and water glasses, greengrocers […] and an array of other street vendors created a wonderful blend of movements, colours, and voices…’

The second photograph from 1920 was taken from a different angle, with the lens pointing at the south of the square. We can see more store signs and the chairs of coffee shops. The store at the centre of the photograph, behind the shop of the Christodoulakis Brothers selling ‘Men’s Items’, is the Konstantinis shop. They were a family of Chania Jews who were fabric merchants. They fled from Crete during the German occupation to save themselves.

According to Giorgos Kamilakis, who witnessed the mass arrests of Jews in 1944, hundreds of people were led outside the Jewish quarter and German trucks were parked at Santrivani. Some were loaded on the trucks straight away and taken to the prison in Agyia. The rest were taken to the building of the city’s shut-down market and were put on trucks a few hours later.

Giorgos Kamilakis remembers wandering around with other children and watching the events. ‘It was dawn. We heard them… they came on Zundapp motorcycles, you know, the ones with the sidecar that had a machine gun mounted on them. The area filled with motorcycles, they had it surrounded… there were also some Volkswagen cars which were small enough to go down Kondylakis Street, since the trucks were too big. They took them and put them on the square [Santrivani] and from the square, they loaded them up on the trucks and left’. This square was the place where the Jews were rounded up and taken away in plain view.

Today, Santrivani is the entrance into the old port of Chania. As it is essentially the passage into the most visited part of the city, it attracts peddlers and vendors from various countries who live on the island, permanently or temporarily.