Abstract. We consider a metric measure space (M, d,µ) andaheat kernel pt(x, y) on M satisfying certain upper and lower estimates, which depend on two parameters α and β. We show that under additional mild assumptions, these parameters are determined by the intrinsic properties of the space (M, d, µ). Namely, α is the Hausdorff dimension of this space, whereas β, called the walk dimension, is determined via the properties of the family of Besov spaces W σ,2 on M. Moreover, the parameters α and β are related by the inequalities 2 ≤ β ≤ α +1. We prove also the embedding theorems for the space W β/2,2, and use them to obtain the existence results for weak solutions to semilinear elliptic equations on M of the form −Lu + f(x, u) =g(x), where L is the generator of the semigroup associated with pt. The framework in this paper is applicable for a large class of fractal domains, including the generalized Sierpiński carpet in Rn. 1.