The town is located 53 km. from Iraklion , right on the north-south axis and is the administrative center of the Messara Valley.
It has a police station, magistrate's court,post office, public PTT office, health center, and offices of most Greek major banks.
Mires is located approximately 20 Kms from the seaside resorts of Matala and Kalamaki, 15 kms from the archaeological site of Phaistos and 1 km from the Panagia Kaliviani monastery.

According to most historians Mires is a new city probably established in the middle of the 19th century. The word "mires" in Greek means lots of land. The most probable speculation is that in 1543 when the Venetians moved residents from Peloponnese, which was occupied by the Turks at that time, to Crete they gave them lots of land to cultivate. As time went by, the location of these lots made them a convenient place where residents from the surrounding villages met to trade and sell animals and foodstuffs. Mires is still the trading center of the whole area. Since the town is fairly new, there is a very small number of relics of the past , the most notable being the venetian fountains and the only surviving old house of the city. The cultural association of the town organizes various events (dances, feasts etc) during the months of July and August in the yard of the association's building and in the main square of the town. Another event that attracts visitors is the bazaar that takes place every Saturday in the town, in which locals form all the surrounding area, sell and trade foddstuffs, animals and various handmade artifacts (clay and bronze pots and pans , etc..).
Mires is also the collecting center of most of the agricultural products of the area which are processed and sold by the Messara Agrarian Union .
Finally there are the municipal gardens in the town where people seek refuse from the summer heat , walking through the cobblestone paths .

Although Mires itself is a new town , it has expanded and currently includes the villages of Kapariana, Gallia, Vrelli under its administration.

The monastery of Panagia Kaliviani is located at the 59th km on the road Iraklion-Phaistos. The monastery was built during the second Byzantine period. The small Byzantine chapel was painted with frescoes but most of them are today destroyed.
The chapel was deserted untill, during the Turkish occupation in 1873, an old small icon of the Annunciation of the Holy Mother was miraculously found there.and the monastery became a place of worship.
The building of the new church, of Byzantine style, begun at 1911 and was completed in 1924.The monastery also houses a girls orphanage established in 1958.

The known history of the village start with the Turkish occupation. According to travellers of the times the village was first called Vrelli , from the name of the turkish settlement that existed there. Later on it was moved a bit further up the hill,centred to thurch of Agios Antonios whose name it took.
According to the traveller Barozzi in 1579 the village was called Paliohorio. The village is mentioned in the Turkish cencus in 1671 as settled by 18 families.

There are many churches in the villages the most important one being the church of Agios Nikolaos, a domed church dated to the 13th century.The walls of the temple are hand painted with biblical scenes and pictures of saints