Schools in Megalo Kastro

Information on educational activity in the city during the 18^th century is extremely thin on the ground. Though references to Muslim schools and educated Christians indicate that such activity was not entirely absent, it was clearly limited in comparison to previous centuries.

From the early 19^th century onwards this picture began to change. Even before 1800, a seminary at which a learned monk named Synesios taught was operating in the town. Foreign travellers inform us that in 1817 there was a Greek public-run school with approximately twenty students, taught by another monk by the name of Girgorios Megalovrysanos. Further noteworthy evidence on schools at the time is given in the Topography of Crete (1818), whose anonymous author relates that in Kastro there were "a hospital and school, at which pupils are instructed in grammar, logic, poetics and rhetoric, and occasionally mathematics, two schools of art and one of music.".