Agios Stephanos

Still very much a working village,which is spread out along the mountainside. A winding road of about six kilometers from Makriyialos takes you into the center of the village and allows stunning views of the countryside on the way up and down from Makri Yialos.
There are two or three cafenions now and a connecting road of about three kilometers to Pefki. A very Cretan village. Here we have renovated many houses and have land for sale too in and around the village.

This village originally has the small hamlets Aori, Agios Stephanos and Agios Ioannis connected to it and it was also mentioned in a Venetian census by a venetian family , Gras and therefore took their name.Above the village is the remains of a venetian fort, which locals call Castellos or Fortetsa.

The church in the village is dedicated to St Stephen the martyr and in the late eighteen hundreds, Anagnostis Fundalidis, who was a well known leader of the SItia uprising in 1866, also known as Papadakis, settled in GRAS, or Agios Stephanos when he married locally. He had a son Emmanuel in 1850 and he was one of the most dynamic politians and later liberator of Sitia in and around 1876. (From the book "Sitia", N.Papadakis, Arcaeologist, 1983)