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The history of the urban landscape of Chania is simpler compared to the
greater success of Candia and reveals a more elementary structure, the
result of dependency on the capital both hierarchical and functional.
Descriptions of Chania are filled with numerous references to bell-towers and
chapels, which may perhaps indicate a centrality of the organisation of
religious life and its ability to assemble people, in respect to civilian
power. There were many allusions to the presence of the Republic, such as
lions, coats of arms, inscriptions, arsenals, prisons, soldiers' lodgings,
fountains, and cisterns recalling those in Candia.
Perhaps the most dramatic change in the urban fabric was the transformation of
the ancient medieval walls, which were made into dwellings for private citizens
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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