Maritime Museum of Crete — Attraction in Municipality of Chania

Local-feeling museum across two floors that was heavily indexed on World War II, and felt like a collection of models and objects vs. a narrative story or overview of maritime in Crete.

We spent about 30-35 minutes wandering through, not doing in depth reading as the English signs were a little off given typos or unclear meaning given the vocabulary or phrasing used. It also felt extremely nationalistic Greek at times (to the point of almost being propaganda).

There is also no AC and some rooms without fans, so wouldn’t go at the hotter times of day.

However it’s like a good fit if you like ship models or World War II objects, as there were many ship models (centuries ago through World War II), and unique WWII objects to see like radars, binoculars, uniforms, photos, and a small model of a destroyer bridge.

It’s located on the edge of the Venetian harbour and has good views from the upper floor.

Other people were there but it didn’t feel overly crowded.

Toilets available upstairs, which were stocked and mostly clean.

No cafe or...

Pleasant surprise. Definitely recommend for those interested in WWII & maritime history.

In the small WWII area, i.e., “Battle of Crete” section, some items have Greek & English captions, and the English is most welcome. However many artifacts and photos in which I was interested lacked captions or the captions are worn and illegible.

Ship models are numerous and outstanding. They have a model-making facility onsite. These are the star of the show. Seems a waste that almost none of these excellent models offer information in any language. Why go to extraordinary lengths of craftsmanship if you don’t convey what the ship is, what year, what country, and hopefully what its purpose was? And yes, in English, too. This seems an easy fix that would add immense value to visitors’ understanding.

Amazing vacuum tube collection! Unfortunately the value is lost if there are no attendant descriptions about what these artifacts are, what they were used for, and some context as to what came after.

VISITED: 30...

Visited this museum with a couple hours spare during a few days in Chania and was pleasantly surprised. Cheap entry (less than £5 equivalent), and a myriad of exhibitions on Chania and Greece's naval history (militarily and otherwise).

Some of the exhibition boards are woefully out of date and I'm pretty sure there's at least one board which is borderline offensive with regards to how it speaks about non-orthadox religions, in particular Islam. Broadly the layout of the museum on the ground floor is sensible, by era - though you do have to move non-intuitively to do it 'in order'.

Upstairs is where the real showpiece of the museum is (for me) - the content, artefacts, ancdotes, and exhibits on the World Wars are fascinating and worth the admission price alone.

I wouldn't visit again - but would reccomend it for anyone interested in finding out more about Greece's military history on water and its complicated relationship with...