Yakinthia is an artistic cultural festival that takes place every year in July on Crete in the village of Anogeia.
Events are taking place in the area that has been specially configured for this purpose in a place of Psiloritis mountain, just after Anogeia village, at an altitude of 1260 m.
There has been built a chapel dedicated to St. Hyacinth (Agios Yakinthos), which has the shape of a Cretan “mitato“, a circular building made of flat stones with a dome.
Inside the chapel there is a full body figure of St. Hyacinth. Next to the chapel, it has been built a stone theater, where concerts are taking place under the shadow of trees.
The topic of the first Yakinthia festival was the “Magnus Eroticus” (Megalos Erotikos) and was dedicated to the remembrance of Manos Hatzidakis.
Since then, every year Yakinthia has a different topic and generally join together Cretan music and Cretan folk tradition with music and traditions from other places of Greece and the Mediterranean.
It is an important institution of cultural creation in our country and a benchmark for Mediterranean cultural exchanges, while it participates in the network of the most famous Mediterranean festivals.
Yakinthia Festival is “challenging” the spirit and the body with a different topic every time and attendees live a unique mental and physical experience in the natural environment.