Knossos Crete

Arthur Evans excavated Knossos from 1900 and then spent 35 years reconstructing large portions of it in reinforced concrete, painting rooms with frescos based partly on surviving fragments and partly on his own imagination. The result is vivid and walkable but not entirely trustworthy, and archaeologists have been arguing about his decisions ever since. The useful frame is to treat it as a partial reconstruction of a building destroyed around 1375 BCE rather than as an untouched Bronze Age ruin. A lot of what you see is Evans’s idea of what it looked like, which makes it interesting in a different way.

The Palace

The Palace of Knossos covered 22,000 square metres and served a surrounding settlement that may have housed 80,000 people at its peak. The Minoan civilisation that built it had developed a written administrative script called Linear A, multi-storey architecture, and drainage systems sophisticated enough to include running water and flush toilets at a time when most Mediterranean societies were still building in single storeys. Linear A has never been deciphered; nobody knows exactly what language the Minoans spoke.

The Throne Room has an alabaster throne in situ that is the oldest throne still in its original position in Europe, flanked by replica griffin frescos. The originals are in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. The Grand Staircase descending into the east wing is Evans’s most technically impressive concrete reconstruction, with columns narrower at the base than the top in the characteristically Minoan manner. The labyrinthine ground plan, with interlocking rooms around a central court, almost certainly contributed to the Greek myth of the Minotaur.

Visit before 10am or after 4pm from June through September; the site is fully exposed in the Cretan sun and midday in August is genuinely unpleasant. Entry around EUR 15; combined tickets with the Heraklion Archaeological Museum are available and worth buying.

The Heraklion Archaeological Museum

The museum is, in the honest opinion of most classicists who visit both, the more important destination. It holds the actual Knossos frescos, the Snake Goddess figurines, the Phaistos Disc (a fired clay disk covered in undeciphered symbols, possibly a religious text, possibly a game board), and the Harvester Vase with its processional relief that gives the clearest sense of Minoan artistic achievement. The museum was renovated in 2014 and the presentation is excellent. Allow three hours minimum, and don’t rush it to get back to the beach.

Beyond Knossos

Phaistos, 60 kilometres southwest, is the second-largest Minoan palace and has not been reconstructed. It is less comprehensible at first glance but more archaeologically honest than Knossos, and the crowds are a fraction of what you’ll find at Evans’s site. The views from the palace terrace over the Messara plain are excellent.

Archanes village, 10 minutes south of Knossos by car, is a well-preserved Venetian-era settlement in the Knossos hinterland. The family-run tavernas in the village square serve grilled lamb, dakos (barley rusks with tomato, feta, and olive oil), and the local Archanes wine at prices that have nothing to do with the tourist corridor outside the main site entrance. Eat here rather than at the tavernas immediately outside Knossos, which charge tourist prices for average food.

Practical Notes

Rent a car from Heraklion airport. It opens up Phaistos, the southern coast beaches, and the Samaria Gorge in the White Mountains, which is 16 kilometres of descent from the Omalos plateau to the Libyan Sea and the best day hike on the island. The gorge closes November through April due to flood risk.

Cretan olive oil is among the best produced in the Mediterranean. Buy it at a supermarket in Heraklion or at a farm shop near Archanes rather than at the airport, where the same product costs significantly more.