Syngelos Tower Mansion

Standing on a plateau of olive trees and low scrub between the villages of Kato Malaki, Ano Malaki and Kalonyktis, fifteen kilometres south of Rethymnon, the Syngelos Tower Mansion is a weathered relic of Venetian Crete. Raised in the seventeenth century, its construction likely began under an unnamed Venetian landowner and was finished by the Ottomans, who took the island shortly afterwards. The building is a sound example of rural Venetian architecture: a rectangular, three-storey tower adjoined by a two-storey structure, whose ground floor once housed an olive oil press. Its present name owes nothing to its original masters. In 1900, the tower was purchased by Manolis Papadonikolakis, a returning emigrant from the United States, whose nickname, Syggelos, stuck to the property. The condition today is rather poor, the stonework worn and the interiors largely stripped, yet the outline of the feudal holding remains legible in the landscape.