Observations on the Layout of the Sixteenth Century Venetian Land Walls of Candia in Crete, or the Thousand Passi Circle Hypothesis

The paper discusses the formal geometrical principles which possibly dictated the layout of the sixteenth century walls of Venetian Candia in Crete, Greece. The research was based on an accurate survey which enabled digital overlays of the available data. A scheme consisting of two 3-4-5 Pythagorean triangles is proposed, circumscribed in a circle of exactly 1000 Venetian passi in diameter (5000 Ven. feet). The vertices of this triangle define the positions of the three main bastions of the fortification, whereas the circle conceptually unifies the scheme with the Sea Fortress. The spine of the triangle is oriented in the North–South direction, thus permitting us to argue that the certain locale with its omnipresent natural features, could have served as a source of innate inspiration to M. Sanmicheli, who is known to have developed the basic layout of the walls during his stay in Crete (1538–1539). A recently published, early plan of the fortifications supports the hypothesis.