A fortifed outpost

If you accept that Crete is a place where there have been wars more-or-less all the time, I guess it's moderately interesting that Sitia was a completely walled town running up a very steep mountain - though, as with the sheep, it's hard to imagine exactly why anyone would feel the need to devote that colossal amount of energy and resources to building walls in the middle of a barren mountainside.

I suppose if you're part of a gang which is into violence and attacking people because they've got something you want, you need a place to hide and defend yourself when they get together a bigger gang and attack you back.

Rather nice engravings from 1652 and 1674 in the café, giving rather different pictures of the town ... Interesting that, like Old Sarum (Salisbury), the church is in a quarter which is walled off from the rest of the town, and there's only one narrow gate to get in by ... Originally the town walls enclosed almost everything- only the molo (jetty) and the lazarett (the lepers' isolation hospital) were outside (on the bottom left and right of the engraving, respectively) ...