Itanos, one of the most important coastal cities of Eastern Crete from the Minoan era to the early Christian years, is known today as Erimoupoli. The inhabitants of Itano dominated all the eastern coasts of Sitia from Cape Samonion (cape Sidero), to Cape Erythraeo, today’s Goudoura and the island of Lefki (Koufonisi).

Itano is mentioned by Herodotus. When Pythia told the Theraeans to send a colony to Libya, the Theraeans sent representatives to Crete to look for people to lead them there. The envoys reached Itano, where they met a purple fisherman, Corovius, who told them that he had once been carried away by the winds and arrived in Libya. They convinced him to lead them to where they built the colony of Cyrene in 630 BC.

Itano is also mentioned by Stefanos Byzantios, who believes that it was named after Itano Phoenix. According to him, it was a colony of the Phoenicians, who were engaged in the industry of purple and glass.

Phoenician merchants, who traded Phoenician raw materials with Cretan products, had their headquarters in Itanos. They also had workshops for fishing and purple dyeing, glassmaking and weaving. Itanos has always been a Syrophoenician station, where they worshiped Phoenician gods, such as Phoenix, Amphiona and Tanga.

Itanos was an important port and transit trade station between the East and Crete. With this trade, the industry of purple and glass, shipping and fishing, and with the great revenues of the sanctuary of Diktaeus Zeus, which was in its territory, it became rich, as is shown by the multitude of its temples and its luxurious marble buildings .

But her wealth caused her to be enslaved by the Dragmians, who were before her vassals, and when the Ierapytnians destroyed Praisos, they reduced Itano even more. After the Roman conquest it managed to maintain its status and prosper, thanks to its trade and shipping.

She minted her own coins, of which Svoronos mentions many types, which had emblems of tritons, the most ancient marine deity of Anat. of Crete, tridents and fishes, as suited the coins of a maritime city. During the early Christian period, he erected brilliant and majestic temples, as their ruins show. Itanos was destroyed in 9 AD. century, by the Saracens, or perhaps, by the earthquake of 795 AD.

It seems to have been inhabited again but with the corsair raids of the 15th century it was completely destroyed and its inhabitants retreated to safer mountainous settlements. The polity of the Itanias was initially a kingdom but later became democratic and had the councils, the senate and the church of the Municipality.

In the 3rd century BC there seems to have been an attempt to overthrow the democratic, aristocratic polity. Then they asked for the help of Ptolemy of Philadelphus of Egypt, who sent the general Patroclus Patronus and helped them. In Itanos many epitaphs from the early Christian years were found.

On the lintel of the church of St. Ioannou is a built-in epigram of the 3rd BC. century, which concerns Itanius, who, while serving the Fatherland, emerged in the bow as equal to the Aegis Phoebus Apollo.

In 1919 an old tomb was found, covered by two large inscribed slabs, now in the Heraklion Museum, made of native bluish hard titanolite of the Cape. One bore an inscription in small letters in 98 verses, but the surface was eaten away by moisture and few letters survive.

This is a great historical writing of the 2nd AD. century, related to the dispute between Itani and Hierapytni over the Dikteo Sanctuary. The other had a resolution of the Italians of the 3rd BC. century, in honor of the Macedonian general Patroklos of Patronus.

Itanos is referred to by the same name u-ta-no on the Knossos B writing tablets. At Kavo Sideros those sailing to the East worshiped the Gods of the Winds who were later replaced by the worship of Poseidon.