Crete, due to its strategic importance, changed hands several times and, as a result, experienced the cultural hybridization and homogenization that formed and changed it spatially. The proposed study considers changing hands as an important factor that determines the formation and transformation of Crete spatially in the case of Rethymnon. It will examine the spatial changes of Rethymnon after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey that took place in 1923.

The main sources of this study are the exchange catalogs for Rethymnon that were created, by the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, using the archives of the population exchange commission, and partly published online; Rethymnon population records between 1900-1927; the output of the author’s fieldwork between the years 2013-2015 in Rethymnon; and the liquidation requests (tasfiye talepnamesi) found in the State Archives of the Prime Ministry of the Republic of Turkey.

In this study, the street patterns are visualized according to the documents of the Rethymnon Refugee Rehabilitation Committee, and the economic and class dynamics that generated these patterns are investigated.The overall aim is to evaluate the spatial changes after the population exchange in the context of cultural hybridization and homogenization.