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“The thing about Iraklion,” declared Manolis, as he refilled my thimble-sized glass and his own, “is that tourists don't bother to come in these little streets to see how we live, to meet real Cretans.” He tossed back his raki and reached out for the flask. “No, they think Iraklion's all dirty and noisy, so they go away quick. Maybe they think we eat them.”

It was the kind of conversation you tend to have at one in the morning at a tin table in an Iraklion back-street ouzeri. The bestubbled, bear-hugging owner nodded vigorously as he sliced another heap of cheese and tomatoes into the plate, and the talk went on as only Irakliots can spin it out - scurrilous, argumentative and deadly funny.

What Manolis said is true enough, though. Visitors to Crete do tend to sidestep the island's capital city. There are certainly plenty of reasons. Iraklion is the first place most visitors encounter on arrival by plane or ferry, and a dusty, rowdy, honking, disorganised mess it can seem, with road drills and scooters echoing in the narrow streets. Irakliots drive like charioteers with the finishing line in sight, and they talk in loud, declamatory voices with plenty of apparently furious hand and body language. It's all far removed from the gentle, slow-paced, pastoral images that most people have in their heads when they book a holiday in Crete.

But, like many things in Crete, all is not what it seems in Iraklion. Under the bold demeanour and raised voices, the majority of Iraliots retain the good manners and hospitable instincts of the village life that most of them have only recently relinquished. As for their city - less than a stone's throw from the clamour and crowds along the main streets, Iraklion still holds the atmosphere and appearance of an ancient Mediterranean city with a long, densely tangled history, a richly rewarding place for a day-long exploration on foot.

On a cool, windy Good Friday morning I climbed the ramp to the San Andreas Bastion overlooking the sea, and set off up the path that runs along the top of Iraklion's medieval city walls. This tremendous circuit of hugely thick walls - more than 100 yards wide in places - made Iraklion the best-defended city in the Mediterranean when it was built by Crete's Venetian rulers in the 1460s. By the time the great engineer Michele Sanmichele had finished strengthening the walls midway through the following century, seven great bastions jutted out defiantly into a deep moat. Yet through a mixture of neglect and treachery, the walls failed to save the city when the Turks captured it in 1669 after an epic siege of 21 years.

The wall-top path led through banks of spring flowers, their brilliant crimsons and acid yellows freshened by last night's rain. Inland rose the mountains behind Iraklion, muted into a misty blue. I passed the grassy bulges of the Pantokrator and Bethlehem Bastions, and the bare top of the Martinengo Bastion where Nikos Kazantzakis, native of Crete and author of Zorba The Greek and other superb novels, lies buried under a plain slab looking to the sharp profile of Mount Iouchtas. The view down from the walls was of the private lives of Irakliots: washing on a line, an old woman asleep under a rooftop fig tree, a dog raving at the end of a chain in a flowery back yard, three men slapping playing cards down on a table.

I walked the walls as far as Platia Eleftherias, Freedom Square, the heart of Iraklion. Having all but encircled the old city, it was time to plunge into its warren-like heart. Good Friday church bells and the doleful, highly amplified chanting of priests were drifting across the city as I struck out along fashionable Odos Daidalos and through Platia Venizelos. French tourists were having their photos taken against the Morosini Fountain, a superb piece of 17th-century Venetian art featuring snub-nosed lions and a frieze of jolly, conch-blowing mermen and maids. It was installed in 1628, only forty years before the Turkish conquest.

Down near the waterfront, beyond the harbour where yellow fishing nets were drying under a massive Venetian fort, I took a short refresher course in 5,000 years of Cretan history in the admirable Historical Museum. Here were Minoan Bronze Age pottery shards, Roman statues, Byzantine ornaments, Saracen bone combs, Venetian marble sculptures, Turkish weapons, photos of German invaders from World War Two: the rich palimpsest of a fertile island, strategically placed between Europe and Africa, that everyone wanted and many possessed and lost in their turn. Here were the Cretan resistance fighters too, in stiff ancient portraits - red-capped, moustached and bearded guerillas, their sashes bulging with daggers and pistols, the very epitome of their own battle cry, 'Freedom or Death!'

An intimate tangle of dog-leg lanes led me on, to find the Priuli Fountain squeezed between a modern block of flats and a tottery old house with an overhanging Turkish upper storey. The fountain with its elaborate Corinthian columns has been dry for many years. It was built in 1666, during the final years of the Great Siege - one last flourish of the Venetian's sophisticated, vulnerable civilization that had ruled Crete for more than four centuries and left wonderful houses, harbours, fortresses and monuments in every corner of the island. The Venetian inscription on the Priuli Fountain was soon overtopped by a Turkish one: both now stand redundant and all but indecipherable.

In Platia Aikaterinis I entered the cool shade of the church of Agia Aikaterinis to admire Crete's best collection of religious art. The medieval painters who beautified the island's thousands of churches with frescoes and iconic pictures had their own earthy, realistic and inimitably Cretan style, warmly humorous yet extremely devout. Mikhail Damaskinos was the master painter, and here hang some of his 16th-century masterpieces - among them a Last Supper with a wonderfully sneaky Judas, an Adoration with camels, agitated horses and Turkish-looking soldiers, and an icon of Christ celebrating Mass in the midst of a crowd of blue-winged angels.

I joined the throng lighting candles and saying prayers in the Cathedral of Agios Minas on the square. On the church steps the smell of grilling fish came wafting temptingly to me. I followed it like a hungry dog, and near the walk's end found young Doukas cooking strips of octopus for the Good Friday customers outside his little café in Odos Amaltheus. The octopus was tender and tangy, with a savour of the sea. The village wine was good, too. I ate and drank with pleasure in the breezy alley, watching the Irakliot world go by and hearing church bells and scooter horns mingling on the wind.

The Walk
Allow a day. This is an excellent way to occupy the rest of the day after an early morning visit (by far the best time) to Iraklion's world-famous Archaeological Museum.

Start and finish: Iraklion Archaeological Museum, Platia Eleftherias. To reach the start of the walk itself, take a taxi (about £2 - rank is opposite the museum) to San Andreas Bastion at the western seaward end of the medieval city walls, where Odos Makariou and Odos Sofokli Venizelou meet.

Climb the ramp to the wall-top path and follow it past the bastions of Pantokrator, Bethlehem, Martinengo (tomb of Crete's great novelist, Kazantzakis), Jesus and St George. A brief descent is necessary at the Bethlehem Bastion. The rampart path from here on is clear but far from smooth, and you might prefer to walk outside the walls through the linear garden in the medieval moat until you regain Platia Eleftherias.

From here it's best to wander with a city map in hand (available from the Tourist Office and many hotel receptions). The walk as described follows Odos Daidalos to Platia Venizelos (a.k.a. Lion Square, with the Morosini Fountain) and the Venetian Loggia and Church of Agios Titos; then Odos 25 Avgoustou to the harbour and Venetian fort. Side roads go west to the Church of Agios Dimitrios and on to the Historical Museum on Sofoklis Venizelou.

From here a succession of tiny roads - Grevenou, Kalimeraki, Chortatsou, Vistaki, Giamalaki and Kazantzaki - lead to the Priuli Fountain. On by Kazantzaki, Apokoronou, Odos 1770, Moirelou and Agion Deka to Platia Aikaterinis and the Museum of Icons. Then more narrow roads - Karterou, Amisou and Pizaniou, to Vikela and the Turkish and Venetian fountains in Platia Kornarou. Lastly up the market street of Odos 1866, and right along Dikaiosinis to the Archaeological Museum.

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