Rokkea streams rock, indie, euro pop and italo disco around the clock from Rethymno, a city on the northern coast of Crete. The station's name is older than anything in its playlist by roughly two and a half thousand years, borrowed from a temple that stood on the same hill long before Greece had radio, or Venice, or even the city of Rethymno itself.
A Name Borrowed From an Ancient Temple
Rethymno's Venetian-era Fortezza, the massive pentagonal fortress that still dominates the city's skyline, was built directly on top of the citadel of ancient Rithimna, and on the site of the Temple of Artemis Rokkea, according to research compiled by Cretan Beaches. The radio station takes its name directly from that temple, a small but deliberate link between a 21st-century web radio and one of the oldest layers of history buried beneath the modern city.
A City Built in Layers
Rethymno itself has been occupied since the Late Minoan period, but stayed a minor settlement for most of antiquity, easily taken by Arab forces and largely insignificant until the Venetians arrived. Venice turned Rethymno into the administrative capital of its own prefecture, developing the harbor and, starting in 1540, building a line of walls designed by the architect Michele Sanmicheli. Those walls failed to stop the Ottoman corsair Ulu Ali Reis, who razed the city in 1571. The Venetians rebuilt, laying the foundation stone for the current Fortezza in 1573 under military engineer Sforza Pallavicini, only for the Ottomans to take the finished fortress within 23 days when they besieged it in 1646.
A Modern Station in an Old Town
Rokkea broadcasts from inside that same layered history, running a 24/7 mix of rock, pop and indie hits spanning the 1980s through today. The station also takes listener requests directly, building dedicated shows around songs submitted by its audience rather than sticking purely to a fixed rotation, a small but personal touch for a station based in one of Crete's most historically dense old towns.
Two and a Half Millennia Apart, Same Hill
There is something fitting about a station playing rock and indie hits under a name that once belonged to a temple for the goddess of the hunt and the wild. Rokkea did not invent its identity from nothing. It picked it up from the same ground the Fortezza, the Venetians, and the ancient citadel of Rithimna all stood on before it, a small reminder of how much history one Cretan hillside can hold.