Agia Triada

 

Priuli Fountain

A new friend led me to  the Priuli Fountain in a street I had passed for months but never properly entered, tucked behind the Bodosakis School in Agia Triada (Holy Trinity), about 100 metres from my apartment. Until recently, the lane was uninviting: piles of sand and other builders’ rubble along with a  sense that it went nowhere useful. Then the road was repaired, the clutter cleared, and in a small alcove halfway along the west side of the street, an old fountain emerged from the background.

It’s a fancy piece of architecture: four columns are topped with detailed capitals and crowned by a triangular pediment. The ornately carved upper niches and the overall structure resemble other Venetian era fountains I’ve seen across Crete .  I snapped a photograph and hurried home to investigate. With help  from Google Lens, I learned that I had been looking at the restored Priuli Fountain, built in 1666 during the sixteen-year siege of Chandax, now Heraklion, after Ottoman forces cut off the city’s main water supply.

The later Turkish plaque is placed above the recycled Roman plaque.

The Venetian General Governor, Antonio Priuli, located groundwater on the southwest side of the city walls and diverted it toward this quarter, creating the fontana nuova as a lifeline for the inhabitants near Dermatas Gate. A centrally-placed recycled Roman slab engraved in Latin recalls the occasion. A few years after the Ottomans had conquered Crete, a smaller plaque in Arabic was placed above the first inscription praising the Ottoman official who had repaired the fountain. That such a piece of emergency engineering with its own touches of artistry and historical legacy had been sitting almost within sight of my balcony made the discovery feel both thrilling and chastening.

Only a short time earlier, my friend George had stood on the balcony while spraying for mosquitoes and gestured across the Bodosakis School toward Agia Triada. “A maze of narrow streets,” he said, “and do you know why?” The Venetian rationale, he explained, was defensive: if attackers breached the sea walls, the twisting alleys would slow and confuse them. I already knew how easy it was to feel turned around there. The district is small, and I was never truly lost, but its dead ends, looming buildings, and sudden turns could make it feel larger and more secretive than it was.

Another George, a photographer acquaintance, often says how lucky we are to live “within the walls,” and he’s right. Central and within walking distance of everything I need, it's definitely got a close-knit villagey feel.  And yet Agia Triada had remained, for me, a place beside my route rather than part of it, until an encounter with some neighbours. They showed me their street and then the fountain.

Since then, Agia Triada has changed shape in my mind. In the stifling summer heat, I now choose its shaded back streets instead of inhaling car exhaust out on the main roads when I walk to the supermarket. I slow down. I look into corners I used to pass without interest. I wonder what else is waiting there.