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.