When Chania’s municipal market – the Agora in the city centre – closed in November 2021, it was the end of an era, both for the shopowners and for the citizens of Chania for whom it had been focal point since its opening in 1913. The planned renovation was long overdue and the Municipality saw it as a chance not only to restore and modernise the city’s major landmark but to redress the imbalance in its retail profile.

One hundred-plus years after it was first built, the Agora was becoming dilapidated; its roof leaked, the basic services were outdated and the structure did not meet modern anti-seismic standards. In addition the food shops which were its original raison-d’être had increasingly been replaced by units selling cheap clothing and tourist goods, and the citizens of Chania doing their food shopping had been largely replaced during the summer months by swathes of cruise passengers looking for souvenirs. The aim of the renovation was to bring the building up to modern construction standards while retaining its traditional character. Those retailers who wished to return would be able to do so, but the emphasis would be on the sale of local products.

Following the closure a tender was issued for the renovation work in January 2022, which was won by ΤΟΜI S.A., a subsidiary of the Athens based firm AKTOR. The budget for the project was €15 million and the deadline for completion was 24 months from signature of contract, i.e. somewhere after the end of 2023. The specification included stripping the monument back to its bare walls, removing all internal partitions, floors and plasterwork, as well as the roof tiles and steel roof trusses. The floor would be excavated to reinforce the foundations and a new concrete slab floor would be installed, to be covered with marble or ceramic tiles. The steel skeleton for the roof would be reconstructed off-site, and specialist workers would be brought in to repair and replace worn elements of the stone façades and their clocks. New plumbing and electrical services would be installed, new wood and aluminium windows, and the whole building plastered and painted ready to receive its tenants.

Initially the work of clearing the building and dismantling the internal fittings proceeded swiftly. The roof was stripped of its tiles and the steel trusses were removed, and during a site visit in October 2022 the mayor of Chania Panagiotis Simandirakis was expressing optimism over the rate at which work was proceeding. By this point, however, excavations of the floor had revealed the remnants of the Venetian bastion over which the Agora had initially been built. The need to preserve the archaeological relic underneath the new construction required a revision of the plans and approvals from the archaeological authorities and the ministry of Culture, which considerably delayed parts of the renovation. At the same time the steel roof trusses proved beyond repair and new replicas had to be built.

In the midst of this the parent firm AKTOR was bought out by INTRAKAT, which thus became one of the largest construction group in the country, and the deal had to be approved by the Competition Commission, adding to the uncertainty hanging over the project. The overall result was that for a long period there was little activity on the site, and the citizens of Chania, long used to delays in the execution of public works, began to joke that the bare skeleton of the building would be the only surviving part of the monument in the years to come.

However, on a second site visit at the beginning of August 2023, the mayor was anxious to reassure the media that all was proceeding according to plan, albeit with some delays. The problems caused by the discovery of archaeological remains had been overcome, and approval of the revised plans by the Central Archaeological Council was expected imminently. The contractor had been given an extension to the summer of 2024, and installation of the new roof was expected to start in September. Meanwhile work on static reinforcement of the building had been completed and other work was continuing according to plan.

As regular visitors to Chania will know all this proved hopelessly optimistic. By the time of a third site visit by the mayor on 30th April 2024, the deadline for completion had been put back to the summer of 2025 and while work was clearly ongoing, with new concrete floors being laid, there was still no sign of the steel roof.

In the event, portions of the steel framework did not start to appear at the site until the end of July 2024, and on a visit to Chania this week (January 2025) we found it still in a partial state of assembly. The west wing of the Agora had progressed to the laying of roof tiles, elsewhere the wooden substructure for the tiles was in the process of installation, while on the northern half of the main aisle segments of the steel roof trusses were still lying on the ground, awaiting assembly. The whole building was covered in scaffolding and work was clearly in progress rendering the outer walls. However, even allowing for the fact that work on the internal fittings will be able to proceed faster once the roof is completed, it seems unlikely that the building will be ready to move into by the summer, especially as there are 2 to 3 months of potentially bad weather still to come.

The erection of the original building
The proposal for a central market in Chania was first aired in 1908, and was approved at a Municipal Council meeting in June of that year, a committee being set up to oversee the project. On 8th August 1908, the committee presented to the Council the definitive plan for the building and related works (demolition of the bastion which was part of the Venetian fortifications, filling in of the moat, appropriations, construction of site accommodation, etc), as well as the budget for the work (320,000 drachma – equivalent to between €3 million and €13 million today, depending on the scale of comparison used).

On 7th December 1910, the Bank of Crete approved a loan of 300,000 drachma secured on the building itself and the future rental of the shops, and the work was put out to tender. The foundation stone was laid by the mayor Emmanouil Mountaki on 14th August 1911 and the construction work started immediately. The main work was completed in the second half of 1913, and the Agora began operations from 1st November 1913. The official opening was carried out by the then Prime Minister of Greece Eleftherios Venizelos on 4th December 1913, three days after the official ceremony of the Union of Crete with Greece.

Two years and 3 months from foundation stone to completion seems fast in comparison with the time it is taking to complete the renovation, as does the period of 8 months from approval of the concept to the start of work. However, if one takes into consideration the fact that major renovations of old buildings are notoriously more difficult and more expensive than erecting new ones, and that up to a year of the current delays have been due to the finding of archaeological remains and getting their manner of preservation approved by the authorities, perhaps we should not be too quick to criticise the Municipality.

Add to that the complexity of modern building standards and modern services such as plumbing, electricity supply and communications – the laying of fibre-optic cables is one feature of the reconstruction work – the completion of the building on a similar timescale and at a similar scale of cost to the old one (as far as cost comparisons can be realistic) must be considered a success. What seems certain is that despite the pessimists who doubted that the job would ever be done, at some point in the not-too-distant future the market traders and the citizens of Chania will have a roof over their heads under which they can conduct their business.