Eleftherios Venizelos was born in Hania in 1864 and went on to become Greece's greatest modern statesman — prime minister seven times, the architect of modern Greece's territorial expansion, and the dominant Greek political figure of the early 20th century. His family house in the Chalepa suburb east of the old town has been preserved as a museum, with period furniture, documents, photographs, and personal effects from his long career.
The Chalepa neighbourhood itself is worth the trip: it was the diplomatic and residential quarter of Hania during the Cretan Autonomous State period (1898–1913), and still has the finest collection of early 20th-century villa architecture in western Crete. The graves of Venizelos and his son are on Profitis Ilias hill above the city, with a panoramic view over Hania and the sea — a more visited site than the museum itself.