Knossos

Another day out was to the ancient Minoan Palace of Knossos, this is where the legend of the Minotaur originated from and was the home to King Minos. The palace was built on a hill called Kefala as this was a very good location as it was next to a river which made for a good water supply, it also had good access to the sea and a forest.

The palace has been destroyed many times and each time has been excavated, the palace is believed to have been built and re-built between 2000 BC and 3000 BC. Many archaeologists have tried to excavate the site, but it was Sir Arthur Evans who was able to secure full funding and purchased the place.

If visiting the site, we recommend that you hire a guide as we found them to be excellent. There are plaques around the site, but even though we read a couple, they didn't tell the story as well as the guide and some parts were so busy you couldn't get close to the plaque.

We learnt that the Minoans had a very sophisticated plumbing system in the palace, amazing considering the place is ancient.

The Minotaur legend isn't all that it seems as well, not sure if we should tell you what the experts think or let you visit Knossos to find out? Ok, we'll tell you!

The experts uncovered many art works which are now in a museum in Heraklion, but they have put reproductions in their place. One picture was of a bull with a person jumping to grab hold of the horns, a second person doing a handstand on the bull's back and a third person behind the bull with their hands in the air.

One theory is that these people were kidnapped from villages and forced to play a sport in order to win their freedom back. They would have to grab the horns, somersault over the bull and land the other side. If they didn't get it right then they were almost certain to be impaled on the bull's horns and killed. The legend that the Minotaur was half man half bull is just a myth.

The legend of the labyrinth comes from the palace itself. Experts believe that the labyrinth was the palace as you can imagine that all those years ago something with a lot of rooms would be like a maze to a person when they mostly would only have been in one or two roomed buildings. Knossos palace has around 1000 rooms!

The symbol for Knossos is a two headed axe and this is called a 'labrys' a Lydian word which could have eventually developed into the word 'labyrinth.'

An actual secret passageway or an underground purpose built labyrinth/maze has never been discovered.

Around the site you can visit the throne room, the king's bedroom, wine cellars and although we couldn't get close because it was still being excavated, from a distance we saw the Queen's bathroom and her bath. There were two absolutely huge urns about 9ft high and pretty wide, they were used to keep liquids like oil and water in. The legend goes that a young prince climbed into one and subsequently drowned because he was unable to climb out due to the sheer size of them.

The site has been partly re-built with modern materials to show visitors what certain parts would have looked like, this has received some criticism as some say it spoils the site.