344 Georgopoulou
the mother city, but only occasionally did the Venetian settlers form close ties
with the locals.52 A cogent administrative apparatus of governors and their
associates that was closely overseen by the metropolis, duplicated the organ-
isational and linguistic schemes of the metropolis and stressed the coherence
of the Venetian empire. The study of Candia suggests that cultural associations
that meant to create the “feeling of home” could be forged through different
means: by naming institutions and places according to practices of the home-
land, by replicating a structure to recall a monument at home, by recreating a
lived experience or by importing customs or things (clocks were a vital sign of
“modernity” in 15th century towns).53
The replication of important features of the landscape that recall the moth-
erland is one of the most typical features of colonial landscapes. Whether for
practical or ideological reasons many earlier elements and structures were
reused: fortification walls, palaces, and churches. Latin/Italian terms like ruga
magistra, beccaria or pescaria denoted just a linguistic adaptation or modifica-
tion as the layout of Byzantine Chandax did not change drastically under the
Venetians.
The most striking similarities between Venice and Candia are to be found
in Candia’s piazza San Marco, which in its name and organisation replicated
Venice’s main square (Figure 10.3). A church was erected to commemorate
the patron saint of the Venetian Republic, St Mark, across from the ducal pal-
ace and near the loggia; it seems that it was the first official monument built
by the Venetians after they arrived on Crete by 1228.54 Since the governor of
Venetian Crete, the duca, emulated the doge, the topographic arrangement and
ritualistic use of the space also recalled Venice. The same topographical pat-
tern is also observed in Negroponte where the loggia was also located across
from the palace and the church of St Mark’s. Similar arrangements must have
existed in the old city of Modon for which there is an intriguing reference to
52 Wilhelm Heyd, Le colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente, 2 vols. (Venice, 1868);
John Knight Fotheringham, Marco Sanudo, Conqueror of the Archipelago (Oxford, 1915);
William Miller, Essays on the Latin Orient (Cambridge, 1921); and Peter Lock, The Franks in
the Aegean, pp. 266–309.
53 Maria Georgopoulou, “Crete between the Byzantine and Venetian Empires,” pp. 63–78.
54 The magisterial studies produced by Giuseppe Gerola for the Istituto Veneto di Scienze,
Lettere ed Arti in the early 20th century offer invaluable information on these monu-
ments: Giuseppe Gerola, Monumenti veneti. For the photographic archive of this mis-
sion also see Spiridione Alessandro Curuni and Lucilla Donati, Creta veneziana: l’Istituto
veneto e la missione cretese di Giuseppe Gerola: collezione fotografica 1900–1902 (Venice,
1988).