Dermatas Gate

This guide to the Dermatas Gate in Heraklion starts with what Venice spent to build it in the 1590s, a cheap backup door cut into the coastal wall between two bastions so the city could still reach the sea if the main harbor mouth was ever blocked. It follows the leather workshops and the Jewish quarter that once stood nearby, then the French volunteers under the Count de la Feuillade who landed here in November 1668, deep into the second-longest siege in history. Stand at the weathered fragment that survives and picture the rest of the wall that once stood beside it.