Monuments and museums

Discover the top monuments and museums you must see when visiting Crete.
Find brief info about these top choices on Crete, that you can easily access with your rented car.
Start to drive directly from the airport or you can pick it up from your hotel.
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 Discover the top monuments and museums you must see when visiting Crete. Fraud brief info about these destinations on Crete, that you can easily access with your rented car. Starting to drive direct from the airport or you can pick it up from your hotel.

 Festos- Palace

The Minoans were clever folks. Above the extensive Messara Plain, which was then and still is the breadbasket of Crete, they constructed their ruler's main sanctum and palace on a hill surveying everything.

The Minoans were clever folks. Above the extensive Messara Plain, which was then and still is the breadbasket of Crete, they constructed their ruler's main sanctum and palace on a hill surveying everything. Italian archaeologists uncovered the complex in Festos (alternately written as Phaistos or Faistos). It is much smaller than the complex at Knossos. You will hardly need more than 45 minutes for a visit.

 Knossos - Palace

Knossos- palace site was discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos (Μίνως Καλοκαιρινός). The excavations in Knossos began in AD 1900 by the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851- 1941) and his team, and they continued for 35 years.

Knossos- palace site was discovered in 1878 by Minos Kalokairinos (Μίνως Καλοκαιρινός). The excavations in Knossos began in AD 1900 by the English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851- 1941) and his team, and they continued for 35 years. The palace was excavated and partially restored under the direction of Arthur Evans in the earliest years of the 20th century. Its size far exceeded his original expectations, as did the discovery of two ancient scripts, which he termed Linear A and Linear B, to distinguish their writing from the pictographs also present. From the layering of the palace, Evans developed de novo an archaeological concept of the civilization that used it, which he called Minoan, following the pre-existing custom of labelling all objects from the location Minoan.
The palace of Knossos was undoubtedly the ceremonial and political centre of the Minoan civilization and culture. It appears as a maze of workrooms, living spaces, and storerooms close to a central square. An approximate graphic view of some aspects of Cretan life in the Bronze Age is provided by restorations of the palace's indoor and outdoor murals, as it is also by the decorative motifs of the pottery and the insignia on the seals and sealings.
The palace was abandoned at some unknown time at the end of the Late Bronze Age, c. 1380–1100 BC. The occasion is not known for certain, but one of the many disasters that befell the palace is generally put forward. The abandoning population were probably Mycenaean Greeks, who had earlier occupied the city-state, and were using Linear B as its administrative script, as opposed to Linear A, the previous administrative script. The hill was never again a settlement or civic site, although squatters may have used it for a time.
 
Except for periods of abandonment, other cities were founded in the immediate vicinity, such as the Roman colony, and a Hellenistic Greek precedent. The population shifted to the new town of Chandax (modern Heraklion) during the 9th century AD. By the 13th century, it was called Makruteikhos 'Long Wall'; the bishops of Gortyn continued to call themselves Bishops of Knossos until the 19th century. Today, the name is used only for the archaeological site now situated in the expanding suburbs of Heraklion.
 In the first palace period around 2000 BC the urban area reached a size of up to 18,000 people. At its peak, the Palace and the surrounding city boasted a population of 100,000 people shortly after 1700 BC.

Lassithi Plateau

The Lasithi Plateau stretches (11 km (6.8 mi) in the E-W direction and 6 km (3.7 mi) in the N-S direction. It is approximately 70 km (43 mi) east of Heraklion and lies at an average altitude of 840 m (2,760 ft).

The Lasithi Plateau stretches (11 km (6.8 mi) in the E-W direction and 6 km (3.7 mi) in the N-S direction. It is approximately 70 km (43 mi) east of Heraklion and lies at an average altitude of 840 m (2,760 ft). Winters can be harsh and snow on the plain and surrounding mountains can persist until mid-spring. The plateau is famous for its white-sailed windmills, (more accurately, wind-pumps), a local invention that has been used for two centuries to irrigate the land. Despite their vast number (some 10,000) in the past, most of them have been abandoned nowadays in favour of modern diesel and electrical pumps. Because the water table is close to the surface of the ground, all burials in cemeteries are above ground, in a stone mausoleum, or a stone box with decorations. This is because the Lasithi-plateau is endorheic, and there is an impermeable rock just below the surface of the ground

 Archaeological Museum Heraklion

The Herakleion Archaeological Museum is one of the largest and most important museums in Greece, and among the most important museums in Europe.

The Herakleion Archaeological Museum is one of the largest and most important museums in Greece and among the most important museums in Europe. It houses representative artefacts from all the periods of Cretan prehistory and history, covering a chronological span of over 5,500 years from the Neolithic period to Roman times. The singularly important Minoan collection contains unique examples of Minoan art, many of them true masterpieces. The Herakleion Museum is rightly considered as the museum of Minoan culture par excellence worldwide. The museum, located in the town centre, was built between 1937 and 1940 by architect Patroklos Karantinos on a site previously occupied by the Roman Catholic monastery of Saint-Francis which was destroyed by an earthquake in 1856.