Katapola, Chora & the south-west

Everybody comes for one building. Hozoviotissa Monastery is built into a vertical rock face three hundred metres above the sea, white, eight storeys tall and barely wider than a corridor, founded early in the second millennium to protect an icon dated to 812. You park on the road above and climb a few hundred steps. There is a dress code and the hours are short; monks give arriving visitors a glass of psimeni raki and a piece of loukoumi.

Chora sits in a saddle inland at around 300 metres, invisible from the sea, which is how it survived the pirate centuries: whitewashed lanes, a hilltop Venetian castle rock, more than forty churches and absolutely no traffic. From there a path drops past the monastery to Agia Anna, the small white chapel over a rocky cove that is the island's other photograph. Katapola below is the working port and where most of the rooms in this half are, with ancient Minoa on the hill above it and the swims at Maltezi and Finikies reached on foot or by boat.

West of Katapola the island empties out. Arkesini has its acropolis and the Agia Triada tower, Mouros is the most dramatic beach on the island, and at the far south-western tip, off the bay at Kalotaritissa, the rusting hull of a cargo ship lies half out of the water — the wreck of the Olympia. A small boat crosses from the beach to the islet of Gramvousa in season. There is one guesthouse out there; plan it as a day, not a base.