Irakliio, Crete, 18th March

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Our ‘Youth Hostel’ has many rules, one of which is no eating in the rooms. We enjoyed our regular meal of salad, bread and cheese for breakfast in our room before setting out for Knossos. Though only 5 kilometres from Iraklio, it takes 20 minutes to get there by bus because it is virtually all suburban driving. Eventually we reached the right bus stop, clear to us because of the row of souvenir shops lining the street before and after it and the driver’s friendly wave to get off.

This enormous site was first excavated by Minos Kalokerinos, of Iraklio, in 1878. In those days, archaeological excavation was a pursuit of individuals, rather than governments, with rich enthusiasts buying up sites and following their own rules in exploring them. In this case an Englishman, Sir Arthur Evans, described as ‘a man of private means’ and with an enthusiastic and supportive father who was an amateur archaeologist too, purchased the site in 1900 and spent 35 years of his life and ₤250,000 of his own money working on it.

The site is complex, since finds have shown Neolithic habitation from 7000 – 3000 BC, a community of Minoans called Pre-palatial from 3000 – 1900 BC, a first palace building, which was destroyed about 1700 BC, and a second larger palace, which was destroyed in about 1350 BC. On top of that, the Mycenaeans also lived there until Roman times. Excavation of such a multi-layer and complex site would take years these days, but it was accomplished by Evans and his team in only five years. An architect, a professional archaeologist and an enormous team of labourers assisted Sir Arthur Evans.

What Knossos showed was that the Minoans were a very advanced civilisation, with complex political, religious and royal structures, and commercial interactions with other civilisations, such as Egypt. Their artistic and engineering skills were advanced.

The palace had a system of air conditioning and three different drainage systems. Clearly, there are issues regarding conservation and reconstruction of archaeological sites. In most cases, excavation exposes things that were previously protected by being out of the elements underground, although deterioration occurs there too. So either we find and expose, and thus risk damaging things, or we leave them be, don’t learn from them and don’t hasten their destruction. Today we lean towards the softly, softly approach, where great care is taken to conserve everything, and any reconstruction of buildings or artefacts is based on factual knowledge.

Not so in the early 20^th century. Sir Arthur Evans not only worked at great speed, he decided to reconstruct some of the buildings to give greater assistance to the imagination of those visiting the site. Minoan columns were made of wood, as were a lot of beams incorporated into the buildings to strengthen the masonry. Sir Arthur and his team remade buildings, substituting concrete for timber, painting the columns and walls in the colours that they believed were used. They took careful notes of where they found everything and used the finds as evidence for their proposal of what the way of life and buildings would have been like. They are criticised today because, in creating their vision of the palace complex, they ignored, or did not think of, possibilities that didn’t fit their mind set, and the work they did made other items no longer accessible.

All this aside, and it is impossible not to be amazed at the audaciousness of Sir Arthur Evans, this is a fascinating place. There were over a thousand rooms in the second palace, leading out from a central courtyard, with some parts of the building five storeys high. This palace included storage rooms, administrative, religious, residential, reception and royal rooms, and it covered an enormous area. It is supposed to be site of the mythical ‘labyrinth’, where the Minotaur kept by King Minos, lived, and I could believe it. Many rooms were minute and there was no system of corridors; rooms just opened off each other.

Copies of colourful frescoes are in place in the reconstructed sections and it certainly helps to understand the advanced skills of the Minoans when such items are shown in context and not just in relation to a pile of stones. The frescoes were full of life and movement and, to some degree, stylised. We were guided by walkways and ropes, with some areas now protected by modern roofing and many, such as the royal apartments, out of bounds. Despite these limitations, the lack of other tourists allowed us to mull over and imagine the Minoan times, and we spent well over two hours looking around and being amazed and impressed.

A very interesting aspect of the Knossos site was seeing archaeologists at work – some measuring and unearthing a new section and others painstakingly working on conserving a wall. They used paint brushes and tiny trowels to dig out channels into weakened areas, inserted rubber tubes with wires in them into the channels, and then injected some liquid that looked like clay, but probably wasn’t, in through the tubes.

Returning to Iraklio at about three pm, we passed a book shop where the owner offered me a choice of three books in English about Greek subjects. I chose ‘The Island’ by Victoria Hislop. The afternoon disappeared in ‘obligation reading’ to plan our next move, then pleasure reading of my new book.

After a late tea, a walk around the town and a visit to the Internet café, where all the windows are blacked out and there is noise and loud exclaiming and socialising going on all around, it was suddenly midnight.

Above is a sample of the mock wooden pillars made by the Evans team in the 1920s to 'reconstruct' the palace of Knossos. The concrete pillars and beams, and in this case a section of pillar, has a wood grain effect added to the surface as can be seen in the close up below.

Some of the stone used in the Knossos Palace are gypsum and exposure to the weather has caused significant decay.

Our standard lunch (and often breakfast and tea) these days is fresh bread and salad. This picnic was in the grounds of the Knossos Palace, near Iraklio, Crete.