Basilica of St. Mark

This guide to the Basilica of St. Mark in Heraklion traces the building across two empires, from its founding in 1239 as the ceremonial church of Venice's rulers here, through the twenty-one-year Ottoman siege that ended Venetian rule in 1669. You will hear how the conquest reshaped the church itself once the Ottoman official Ahmet Pasha claimed it, and how the building kept changing hands after it closed as a mosque in 1915.