Trip to Crete: Wednesday

On Wednesday we woke up and drove to Lato, which was a site that is dated a little after the Minoans. It was fun to walk around, we got our normal speal about the site from our Archaeology of Athens teacher. She gave us all of the on-site lectures throughout the trip except for the last day. Since we are not tested on this material I did not take notes but listened and took in all that we were seeing.

We then departed to Heraklion/Iraklio (the Greeks have multiple ways to spell the same word) and did a wall walk. We have now jumped ahead thousands of years in history since this wall walk was to look at a Venetian fortress wall. This is clearly not what I was studying but it was very interesting. Also since the Venetians occupied the city it has much more European charm which was nice. So we walked along this wall and saw a fortezza from afar and then saw some other venetian aspects of the city and then we had a really long break to get lunch and look around the city. After the break we went to Knossos!!!!!

Knossos is the most famous palace on Crete. The excavator Sir Arthur Evans, thought that it might be the legendary palace of King Minos (where the Minotaur was rumored to live). In fact that is why it is called Minoan civilization, because it is after king Minos. However Sir Arthur Evans made lots of mistakes. There are no remnants of a labyrinth. So Evans decided that he wanted people to understand what the palace would really look like so he reconstructed areas so that they would be multiple stories and painted the columns etc. To a certain extant he did achieve what he wanted since it is the most visited Palace on Crete. However he fabricated a lot of information to get the desired results. For instance he put frescoes in places even if there were no evidence they were there. Also the frescoes that were painted have no ancient fragments. He even put in frescoes that were found in ancient houses down the road. I was therefore not all that impressed with Konossos because it was not very authentic. I did better understand what the palaces would look like but you have to be so careful in believing only certain aspects.

We then checked into a hotel for the night which was super nice and I went to dinner with some friends.

Trip to Crete Wednesday