Maritime Museum of Crete

A fascinating museum packed with models, instruments and information about the boats that featured in the history of Chania and Crete overall. The star exhibit is the replica of a Minoan ship. Fittingly, the museum is located within an old building associated with shipbuilding. This is definitely not a tourist trap as some called it. This is an informative museum with a special story to tell that rewards anyone who can spend the time to go through the exhibits with care and attention.

Set at the entrance of the Venetian harbour, the building itself feels like a guardian of memory, a quiet reminder of how deeply the sea has shaped Crete’s history and spirit. As I moved through the rooms, I was struck by the sense of continuity from the ancient Minoan sailors to the Venetian fleets and the brave Cretan seafarers of World War II. The museum isn’t just a collection of artefacts; it’s a story of courage, resilience, and identity told through ships, maps, and photographs. The detailed ship models, handcrafted with care, seemed almost alive, as if ready to sail into history once more. What touched me most was the balance between pride and melancholy. The sea, which brought trade and connection, also carried conflict and loss — and the museum captures that duality beautifully.

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 Some of the exhibition boards are woefully out of date and I'm pretty sure there's at least one board which is borderline offensive with regards to how it speaks about non-orthadox religions, in particular Islam.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 naval tradition.

An impressive collection of models as well as other memorabilia making the visit certainly worth. One can walk through very fast (30 minutes) but equally can spend 2 hours if interested in details. Note worthy is the location as well as the views from the windows.

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 drinks onsite.

This musuem hold an outstanding array of memorabilia, model ships, pictures and paintings, shells, nautical instruments etc. on two floors, so there are stairs to climb. It costs €4 for an adult ticket and there is no time limit to your visit. There are public toilets on the first floor. There is lots of information to read, and a video to watch (with English subtitles), however there are a few exhibits with information only in Greek. Overall a good couple of hours.

Well-designed and interesting museum, even though some of the texts are only in Greek. Small, but definitely worth a visit.

An interesting and very patriotic maritime museum in the centre of Chania. Quite old fashioned, lacking much of a narrative and heavily reliant on ship models. It's good value at only 5 euros for adults. I found the English translations very funny though because of how terrible they are, many errors and it uses soaring patriotic language which made me laugh.