Arkadiou Monastery

Back to Crete: 

We visited a beautiful monastery with a fascinating history:

In November 1866, massive Ottoman forces arrived to crush island-wide revolts. Hundreds of Cretan men, women and children fled their villages to find shelter at Arkadiou. However, far from being a safe haven, the monastery was soon besieged by 2000 Turkish soldiers. Rather than surrender, the Cretans set fire to their kegs of gunpowder, killing everyone, Turks included, except for one small girl who lived to a ripe old age in a village nearby. A bust of this woman and one of the abbot who lit the gunpowder stand outside the monastery. In the monastery’s old windmill, is the macabre ossuary with skulls and bones of some of the 1866 victims neatly arranged in a glass cabinet.

(Taken from The Lonely Planet)