Spili

Name: Rethymno Tours
Address: Eratous 6, Rethymno, Crete, 74100, GR
Telephone: +306972531808
Price range: €€

Spili sits in a fold of the Kedros foothills, about 45 minutes south of Rethymno, and is the village most south-coast days pass through on the way back from Preveli. The reason to stop is the square: a row of 25 Venetian lion-head fountains running with cold spring water, plane trees, and a couple of kafenions that still fill with locals in the afternoon. It is free, it takes half an hour, and it is the gentlest full stop after a beach.

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Cost to visit: Free
Drive from Rethymno: About 45 minutes, roughly 30 km
Known for: 25 Venetian lion-head fountains of spring water on the square
Time needed: 20 to 45 minutes, longer if you eat
Best paired with: Preveli Beach, Preveli Monastery and Triopetra

The fountains

The lion heads are Venetian, sixteenth century, and they still work. The water comes off Mount Kedros and runs cold even in August. People fill bottles, wash fruit and splash their faces; it is not a monument you look at from behind a rope. The row sits under plane trees on the main square, which is also the bus stop, the taxi rank and the place the village sits in the evening.

The village

Spili is a working Agios Vasileios village, not a staged one. There is a health centre, a high school, a couple of butcher's shops and a bakery that does dakos rusks. The lanes behind the square climb into stone houses with courtyards. It is a useful lunch stop on a Preveli day because the tavernas are in the shade and the drive back to the north coast is then all downhill.

Practicalities

Free to visit. About 30 km from Rethymno, 45 minutes by car through the Kourtaliotiko road or the inland Spili road. Park on the square. Twenty to forty-five minutes is enough unless you eat. It pairs naturally with Preveli Beach, Preveli Monastery and Triopetra on the same south-coast circuit.