The Xenia hotel project and a century of movement in Nea Chora

The construction of the Xenia hotel in Chania lasted from 1962 to 1970. It was located on the western part of the city’s fortifications, right on the border between the walled city and Nea Chora. The hotel’s pool and café were below the city’s walls, next to the sea, which also helped supply the pool with salt water.

Today, the Xenia hotel has been demolished and the area has become a passage from the old city to Nea Chora, but the café’s frame and the outline of the pool can still be seen, attesting to the site’s old use. Modern tourism differs from that of past decades. Hotel units nowadays often do not abide by the main tenet of the Xenia architectural team, led by Aris Konstantinidis, that hotels ‘should be congruous with and integrated into their natural environment’. In addition, a large number of tourists now seek short-term rentals, which has totally transformed the cities’ residential maps.

In the case of Chania, the construction of Xenia on the city’s western fortification reflected the approach to tourism at the time, with the hotel built near the city’s ‘picturesque’ landmarks, which were associated with the old port and the promotional narrative that centred Chania’s Venetian (and hence Western) character.

Nea Chora started making its tentative appearance on the tourists’ map in the 1980s. Giannis Volikakis was the area’s first hotelier: 

 ‘When I started building the hotel in 1981, there were no other hotels in Nea Chora! Just rooms to let. […] When the hotel was completed, it was an important accommodation unit for the entire area. A Danish company became interested in a contract and we worked with them for 7 years.

In 1981-1982, when we were building the hotel, I remember finding 40-50 people every morning sleeping in sleeping bags under the tamarisk trees! Some were sleeping on the roof of a nearby building. The owner would rent it out for people to sleep on!’ (G. Konstas, D. Maridakis, ‘Nea Chora through the stories of its people’, Chaniotika Nea, 04/02/2017, https://www.haniotika-nea.gr/i-nea-chora-mesa-apo-tis-istories-ton-anthropon-tis/).

Nowadays, the number of tourists arriving in the city is much higher and has created the need for accommodation units not only inside the part of the city that is most popular with travellers, but also outside. Besides, the port, the most popular part of the city for tourists, is no longer the single focus of Chania’s promotional narrative nor is it enough to satisfy the travellers’ needs on its own. Lately, Nea Chora has become one of the neighbourhoods which accommodate visitors and boost the tourism economy of Chania. As a result, it now hosts natives, migrants, and tourists, as owners, workers, and visitors, with each group’s participation in the residential fabric changing from one city block to the next according to their distance from the sea, which still remains the area’s main tourist attraction.      

Refugee neighbourhoods in the urban space tend to look alike for many reasons: They were built based on the same or similar urban zoning plans; they are characterised by small houses and for a big part of the year, when the weather allows, public space constitutes part of the house; the people who live in these houses have similar migration histories and gradually develop relationships and a shared everyday life. Nea Chora both is and isn’t a characteristic refugee neighbourhood. Throughout the 20th and 21st century, it became a meeting point for newcomers to Chania, Muslim and Christian refugees, internal migrants, migrants from Eastern Europe, migrants from the Global South, but also thousands of travellers visiting Crete.     

Walking among the small yards and the accommodation facilities of Nea Chora today, there is a sense that you are walking through an interstitial space which hovers between the world of migration and the world of recreation. The laughter and the voices of the tourists heading for the beach co-exist with songs from Asian and African countries coming from satellite TVs.

Today, the houses of Nea Chora host the refugees and migrants of the 20th and the 21st century. The houses of the Cretan Muslims provided shelter first to the exchangeable Christian refugees of 1922-1923 and then, over the next 100 years, to the newcomers of different eras: internal migrants, Roma people, Albanian migrants, migrants from Eastern Europe and the Global South, war refugees in 2015. This constant ebb and flow of mobility highlights the common characteristics and needs shared by migrant populations. Whether frictionless or tense, the co-existence of the adults and the shared games of the children in the neighbourhood’s narrow alleys signify the continuation of life in space despite all the hardships. Right next to the hopes and dreams of the newcomers to the neighbourhood, these same houses today host the short-term holiday visits of travellers, shedding light on the new aspects and untapped potential of urban space.     

When we look at refugee houses and refugee interwar settlements in general, our gaze tends to focus on the past and not the present. We analyze how important and valuable they were 100 years ago from a social, economic and urban planning perspective, while we disregard an entire century of movement and how it has affected their population composition. The houses of Nea Chora showcase the transformations that have taken place as well as the opportunities and difficulties presented by co-existence, composing the picture of a fascinating neighbourhood hiding inside a very popular tourist destination.