home brewer Loc: Fort Wayne, Indiana

Having look at people's photos and reviews it seems to us that this place is nothing more than an inaccurate reconstruction.

Justadude Loc: Miami, FL

I have a somewhat debilitating interest in (addiction to?) the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean, and I have been to Knossos multiple times. With a light application of relevant information, Knossos is one of the more rewarding stops in the region. Sir John Evans, a British archeologist, tracked down and began the excavations of Knossos at the turn of the 1900s. Perhaps unfortunately he finished his work many years later by 'reconstructing' small pieces of three or four buildings. Evans had some romantic notions about the Minoans (his term) for the people who lived here and his reconstructions have something of a whiff of this, but (a) they are still recognized as nearly entirely accurate, and (b) they constitute an extremely small part of the larger site. And the site itself is large enough to reward at a minimum a couple of hours, and there is an excellent museum about 15 minutes away in Heraklion with some extraordinary Minoan artworks. The point is that most of the site is a really interesting archeological site, only occasionally and informatively dotted with some reconstructions that are, in their essence, pretty accurate.
The Minoan culture remains a mysterious but vital actor in the history of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Egyptian civilization was well established and important, but perhaps somewhat disengaged and internally focused. Mycenaean civilization (Greece, but roughly spanning 1,000 to 500 years before the classical Greece we know from Socrates and Plato) emerged when the Minoans were at their height and ultimately supplanted the Minoans for reasons we do not entirely understand. The Minoan civilization was centered on Crete, where Knossos is the most impressive of many sites, but there were other important settlements, trading posts, and colonies around the eastern Mediterranean (ie: Akrotiri on the island of Santorini). The Minoans seem to have been singularly confident, eschewing defensive forts or walls. At a time when this part of the world was, generally speaking, prone to wars and invasions, it is very strange that this very important, extremely sophisticated culture existed for perhaps 600 years without requiring enormous investments in defense and military sophistication.
And the Minoans were sophisticated. In Knossos there are multiple clues: plumbing (from circa 1500 B.C.E.) more ingenious than anything else built before the Romans. The Greeks claim the invention (discovery?) of the Golden Mean, yet this remarkable proportion is found far too often in Knossos (width to length of rooms, rise to tread of the main stairway, etc.) to be a coincidence. And the Minoans were apparently immensely artful traders, arranging for supplies of tin from both Afghanistan and Cornwall in the UK, for instance. (This is a bit like getting oil from Kuwait to Los Angeles today: theoretically doable but really impressive logistically.) Their art is remarkable, unlike anything else in the region. Minoans may have been matriarchally organized and women certainly occupied positions at the height of both the religious and political institutions. And, apparently, for fun or sport or for reasons unknown they danced with live bulls, specializing in a maneuver in which the dancer grasps the horns of the bull and is then lifted up and over the head of the animal, vaulting onto the bull's back with immense grace and startling sang-froid.
But we really know very little about these people. We have stories from Greek myths that describe Theseus slaying the Minotaur (who lived in Knossos), and we find some of their singular frescoes in ancient Egyptian tombs, and we can see that they were really, really rich and confident but that is close to all we know. What was their religion? How was their society organized? What language did they speak? How and why did their civilization go into decline and get subsumed into the Mycenaean hegemony over what we call Greece? We can not read their writing, and we simply do not know. We know that Minoans were of primary importance. They were in contact with everyone around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, appeared to pal around with Egyptian pharaohs and were immensely influential on the Mycenaeans. This is a place unlike any other that you will visit in Greece, and it represents the mysterious foundation for the great civilizations around it and those that followed. Do visit, and excuse Sir John Evans, a very great archeologist, his minor excesses. (Compared to others, who used dynamite to 'excavate' Troy and brazenly stole the most valuable artifacts they found, Evans is an icon of restraint and academic integrity.)
An extremely erudite and personable guide who is local to Knossos is Androniki Stavroulaki. She usually works with university groups and so on, but if you can book a private tour with her to Knossos you will feel very lucky by the end of the day. She is fluent in Greek (obviously), English, Spanish, and several other languages, and she grew up on Crete. stavroulakiandroniki@yahoo.gr

home brewer Loc: Fort Wayne, Indiana

Justadude thanks. The photos of inverted columns do not look like any I have ever seen and the reconstructed frescos are just too fake looking to me. Maybe Sir John Evans did a better job than I thought. We did plan on the museum. I read that some think a island volcano that destroyed an island and the resulting tsunami may have ended their civilization. I will look into this a little more. So far we have 3 to 4 weeks set aside to explore Crete and a two weeks in Athens and the surrounding area.

Side note, I think the archaeological ruins we have seen in four corners area of the US, Rome, Italy, southern France, Sicily, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and parts of the UK and even southern Germany have spoiled us.

Justadude Loc: Miami, FL

Hello, Home Brewer ~ The island that had a volcanic catastrophe was Santorini (known in antiquity as Thira) and it undoubtedly did release a gigantic, catastrophic tsunami which was extremely destructive in much of the Cyclades, parts of mainland Greece, and parts of Crete. But from what I have read, the dates of the volcano do not coincide with the meaningful decline of the Minoan civilization. The event may have accelerated something that was already happening but, from what I have read, it was not the fundamental cause of the decline.
That said, I would suggest a slightly different emphasis in your itinerary if your motivation is to visit ancient sites. (If your motivation is to visit beautiful beaches and sip retsina in lovely seaside village tavernas, then everything is different.) Crete is a wonderful island with an unimaginably rich history. (Just the history from WWII, in which the Cretan Resistance crippled Nazi operations in the Mediterranean by kidnapping a Nazi general in one of the most bravura operations in the war can absorb the attention for quite a while.) Crete has lovely architectural delights and archeological sites from the ancient Minoan to the Mycenaean to the Classical period to the Roman to the Venetian. It is a delightful place with astonishing beaches, and it is easy spend a month here very, very enjoyably.
If, however, you want to grasp some of the depth and extent of Classical and Mycenaean Greece, I suggest taking about half of your time on Crete and moving that to exploring the Peloponnese. Mycenae, Tyrins, and Pylos will provide you with enormous insight into the Mycenaean mindset, while Olympia, Delphi, and even what remains of ancient Sparta will give you a deeper understanding of Classical Greece. (Reading Herodotus and Thucydides helps.) I love Athens because it has the Acropolis, two stunning museums (both with an ancient focus), some very nice hotels, and because it is a big, modern, dirty, busy, bustling city. I could live there happily, but I have discovered that most visitors strongly disagree. In my experience, most visitors want to visit the Acropolis, the Agora, and the museums, or they want to only visit the Acropolis, and then they want to go to the islands or the further outlying ancient sites. The temple of Poseidon at Sounion is not far outside of Athens, and it might deserve an overnight trip because it is most striking in the morning and evening light. If I am traveling with others, I now schedule more or less three nights for Athens itself.
The good news is that even Pylos and Olympia are not hideously distant from Athens and there are all sorts of interesting things to stop for along the way. When you are visiting Mycenae and Tyrins, there is the delightful seaside town of Nafplio (and surrounding lesser but very attractive towns) to keep you busy at night.
But, as I said, if your motivation for visiting is to party at night and lounge on delicious beaches during the day, then Crete is awesome! And it has Knossos and a bunch of other sites to give you some historical pepper whenever you feel the need. Also Santorini, famous for its good life and sweet hotels, also has some nice beaches, many stunning views, and Akrotiri (mentioned in the previous post) for historical interest and an associated museum that is very much worth visiting (although the archeological site is not very polished). And then there are all the other Cycladic islands, and all the rest of Greece. It is hard to go wrong.
Regarding the frescoes, yes, there are a few that Evans reconstructed, but really not that many. However, at Knossos itself and at several different museums in Heraklion, Athens, and even Santorini there are other frescoes where the originals are more or less untouched. Minoan art is strikingly different from Classical Greek art, Mycenaean art, and Egyptian art, so it really looks somewhat different from what most of us expect to see. Perhaps this accounts for some of what you feel looks fake. But there is a wealth of genuine material, much of it still in situ, that suggests that even Evans's more fulsome reconstructions are not far off the mark. I encourage you to stay skeptical, but do not get too hung up on this. It is not (!) Disneyland.
Good luck!

Boris77

Seemed worthwhile in 1967 when I was there as a military visitor with free time from duties. I wonder how much it/the island has changed since then. It was a colorful relief from the other rock piles of ruins.
I was more interested in the mythologies than any historical accuracy of rebuilding ruins.
Boris