The Landscape of Medieval Greece 329
outset to establish their foundations on Greece, became very important forces
in the propagation of western forms of architecture.
My focus in this essay is the Venetian-ruled islands and the Peloponnese.
The islands of Rhodes with its majestic Hospitaller fortifications started in
1309, Genoese Chios and Lesbos are not included.7 Settlers from Europe fol-
lowed different patterns of immigration and came in several waves of colonisa-
tion especially on Venetian Crete, a large island that was colonised gradually.
Newcomers to colonial territories graft onto the local landscape new elements
that serve their immediate needs and proclaim symbolically their advent and
political supremacy. Any group of successful colonisers bring along teams of
administrators and builders who forge the indispensable infrastructure in
order to enable the smooth installation of the new rulers. By importing ele-
ments of their own culture the settlers feel at home while the locals are con-
stantly reminded of who is in charge. The premise of my work has been that
the topographical arrangement of a colonial town, which houses at least two
different ethnic/social groups, prescribes specific perceptions of power rela-
tions within the urban space by directing movement though streets or squares
and by controlling access to civic resources.8 Whereas the monuments in the
towns served primarily political-administrative, economic, and religious pur-
poses through groupings of public monuments and symbolic signs, structures
in rural settings had as a purpose the control of arable lands, the safekeep-
ing of the borders, and the facilitation of communication; hence, they were
mostly dominated by towers and, we assume, by settlements on large estates,
which have not produced significant remains. The countryside was also dotted
by modest churches and occasionally monasteries which served primarily the
local Greek population.
The built environment of a colonial settlement works by definition as an
agent that mediates social strife. The allocation of space and the prescrip-
tion of architectural norms are in the hands of a foreign ruling elite while the
built environment addresses two audiences at the same time: the colonists
and the colonised. The towns of Candia (modern Herakleion), Rethymnon,
and Canea on Crete, Andravida, Chlemoutsi, Glarenza, Nauplion, Coron and
Modon in the Peloponnese, Chalkis in Euboea, and the Kastro of Naxos in the
7 David Nicolle, Crusader Castles in Cyprus, Greece and the Aegean, 1191–1571 (Oxford, 2007);
Frederick William Hasluck, “The Latin Monuments of Chios,” Annual of the British School at
Athens 16, (1909–10), 137–84; and Lillian Acheilara, The Kastro of Mytilene, trans. David Hardy
(Athens, 1999).
8 Maria Georgopoulou, Venice’s Mediterranean Colonies: Architecture and Urbanism
(Cambridge, 2001), p. 6.