Ano Moulia

Southwest of Ano Moulia, near Gortyna, stands one of the small forts the Ottomans called koules, raised in 1867 or shortly after. It belongs to a series of such posts built in the wake of the Cretan revolution of that year, part of a tightening of control over the island's restless interior. Its position was no accident: it commanded the passage between the regions of Malevizi and Messara, a strategic seam in the landscape. The fort itself is in rather poor condition today, a modest survivor of its kind. A short distance away lies a separate, two-room building that once housed the garrison, a reminder that these were working posts rather than grand citadels. The whole arrangement, fort and quarters together, speaks of a nervous empire watching the roads, though little now remains to suggest the tension it once embodied.