Our island's history has been written with salty water from the sea, and its doors of communication with the sea were, and continue to be, its harbours.

The most important of these doors is the harbour of Iraklion, without, of course, overlooking the role and the importance of the other harbours of our island.

In ancient times, in place of the current Iraklion, there was a coastal settlement and port which served Knossos; later, the Romans shaped it to be suitably functional for their boats.

During the years of Arab domination, the harbour of Handakas, as the Arabs named the city, became the biggest import-export centre in the Mediterranean, especially for their pirated products.

Their boats sailed into the port loaded with stolen treasures of immense wealth and sold to the emirs of the East who came to Handakas for their "precious shopping".

When the Venetians occupied the island, the harbour had already risen to new heights, becoming known as the most important harbour in the Eastern Mediterranean.

At that time, the harbour was the gate of communications between the Venetian Kingdom of Crete (Regno di Candia) and the rest of the world. Because of that status, they fortified it, building, in its entrance, the sea fortress, currently known as Koules. Later, the Turks built a smaller Koules across the harbour which remained for the duration of the Ottoman domination.

In the trading market of those times, the harbour bustled with hundreds of ships which exported the island's products, like oil, soap, grapes, wine, yoghurt, snails, silk, carobs etc.

In later years, Crete joined with the rest of Greece, which enhanced even more the upward development of the Iraklion Harbour, resulting in an even greater economic progress of Crete.

Thusly, an immediate need for enlargement of the small Venetian harbour was necessary, and expansion work began in 1922.

The new larger harbour, situated outside of the old one, featured an enormous jetty on its western side, so that today, after various other extensions, can receive large cruise ships, as well as passenger and commercial vessels, with the capability of loading and unloading hundreds of thousands of tones of merchandise annually.

The port of Iraklion played an equally important historical role in more contemporary years, such as in the Battle of Crete.

When, after a hard and uneven fight of roughly 20 days, the allies saw that they could not remain on the island any longer, the English armed forces that were in the Iraklion Prefecture boarded their fleet at the Iraklion harbour, and, without any previous warning, sailed for Egypt, abandoning the island to the horrors of the Nazi atrocities.

With the liberation of Greece in 1945, the Iraklion harbour again found its rhythm, and entered on a new road of growth and progress.

This is briefly the historical course of this large gate from our island into the world, and no one doubts that a similar course will be continued into the future.