The Archeological Museum is housed in the former church of St Francis, built in the 14C in the Venetian Gothic style; it has a nave and two aisles with ogival vaulting. It was the church for a Franciscan convent and was turned into a mosque by the Turks. The exhibits include magnificent painted sarcophagi and ceramics from the Minoan period and Roman mosaics. The pretty garden has palm trees and other exotic plants around a fine hexagonal Turkish fountain.

The road up to the gorge (16km long) passes over the Omalós Plateau (1 050m). After passing through Omalós, the road ends in Xilóskalo on the edge of the gorge. First a flight of wooden steps and then a twisting path goes down into the depths of the gorge to a viewing platform. There is an impressive view of the ravine between sheer rock walls rising to over 2 000m. The path soon reaches the narrowest section of the the gorge where the distance between the vertical walls is no more than 2-3m.

The old town was built from the 13C onwards by the Venetians, who enclosed it within a wall that was rebuilt in the 16C to the plans of the great engineer Sanmicheli; a few fragments of the wall are still standing. Don't miss the Kastéli district, which was the site of ancient Kydonia, a rival of Knossós, and the Merchants' District which houses the Naval Museum (historic documents and model ships) and contains old Venetian houses (some doorways have sculpted coats of arms and mottoes).

This necropolis, the largest of its period in Crete (1390 to 1200 BC), has already provided many objects (including sarcophagi), some of which are in the museums in Rethymnon and Chania. Nearly two hundred tombs in individual chambers dating from the Minoan era have been found and examined. The size of this cemetery suggests that there was a large town in the area.