Knossos tickets give entry to the Bronze Age palace of Knossos, the largest Minoan site on Crete, just outside Heraklion. The ruins spread over a low hill in a green valley. They are part of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.
This post covers what Knossos tickets are for, how the palace was built and what the Minoans left behind. It also covers the people who dug up the site, the myths and the frescoes. The area around the site, the best time of year and common questions come last.
The sections include Knossos tickets and related Crete tours that can be booked online.
What are Knossos tickets for?
Knossos tickets are for entry to a Minoan palace site in northern Crete. The ruins stand on Kephala hill, and the Kairatos stream runs to the east. UNESCO lists Knossos among six Minoan palace sites from 1900 BC to 1100 BC.
The Kairatos stream reaches the Aegean Sea 1.5 km east of central Heraklion. In Minoan times, water channels carried spring water from Archanes, where the Kairatos begins, to Kephala hill.
Knossos tickets give entry to the site of a city. The Knossos Urban Landscape Project surveyed 11 square kilometres around it. The New Stone Age village on Kephala hill was larger than the palace.
In the Neopalatial era, or new-palace age, Knossos was twice as large as Malia and Phaistos. It was three times as large as Galatas and Zakros. The palace lines up with Mount Juktas.
UNESCO says Crete was a bridge for culture and trade between Europe, Africa and Asia. Crete is seismically active, so earthquakes shake it, and quake damage shows at Minoan sites.
- 2500 BC: Knossos had an estimated 1,300 to 2,000 people.
- 2000 BC: The estimate rose to 18,000 people.
- 1360 BC: The estimate stood at 30,000 people.
Knossos tickets point to a place known beyond Crete. A place-name list of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III includes a name linked to Knossos. Knossos had a harbour in the Poros-Katsambas area of Heraklion from early Minoan times.
How was the palace seen with Knossos tickets built?
Knossos tickets open a palace that was built and rebuilt. Builders levelled or reorganised older buildings on Kephala hill to make a platform for the first palace. Around 1470 BC the lower town burned, but the palace itself did not.
The central court of Knossos measured roughly 24 by 52 metres. The west court lay outside the palace’s enclosed area. It was a public space, easy to reach from the lower town. A court is an open yard surrounded by buildings.
A Minoan hall had a main room, a front hall and a light well. Wooden doors between pillars controlled light and airflow. In rebuilt palaces, columns and doors replaced solid walls. A light well is an open shaft that brings daylight into inner rooms.
Knossos tickets open a palace with its own water system. It brought in clean water and took out waste water and storm water. Minoan clay pipes carried water and sewage for the upper class.
Wooden beams strengthened the palace walls. Columns were made of cypress wood and painted red, as a rule. Lower walls were stone and rubble, and upper walls were mudbrick.
- Pithoi: Storage jars in the storerooms were sunk into floor pits, experts think.
- Gypsum: This soft mineral rates 2 on the Mohs scale of hardness.
- Name: The word gypsum comes from the Greek gypsos, which means plaster.
The big rebuilding at Knossos took place from about 1700 to 1625 BC. Knossos tickets lead through the result: a palace of courts, light wells, storerooms and drains. Drains are channels that carry rain and waste water away. A storeroom is a room kept for supplies.
What did the Minoans leave behind for Knossos tickets holders?
Knossos tickets lead into the world of the Minoans. They left behind tablets in two scripts, sacred double axes, snake goddess figurines and a bull’s head rhyton. The Throne Room is seen as the oldest throne room in Europe.
Linear A was the script of the Minoans from 1800 BC to 1450 BC. About 1400 Linear A inscriptions survive, and together they fill only 1.84 pages of letter paper.
Knossos tickets lead to a site tied to Linear B. This script has about 87 signs for syllables and over 100 signs for objects and goods. Knossos gave about 4158 tablets. Linear B is the oldest known form of written Greek.
Michael Ventris worked as an architect and studied Linear B as a personal mission from his teens. On 1 July 1952, he announced his first findings in a radio talk.
Alice Kober filled 40 notebooks and 180,000 index cards with her notes on Linear B. Ventris guessed that sign groups found only in the Cretan texts were place names, and he was right.
- Double axe: The labrys was a sacred symbol of the Minoan religion in ancient Crete.
- Snake goddess: The two Knossos figurines are made of faience, a crushed quartz paste.
- Rhyton: This pouring cup, shaped like a bull, weighed about three kilograms empty.
Knossos tickets lead to the Throne Room, built in the 15th century BC. It was entered from an anteroom through two double doors. An estimate says thirty people fitted in both rooms.
Who dug up the palace seen with Knossos tickets?
Knossos tickets open a palace first tested by Minos Kalokairinos, whose father owned the site. Arthur Evans bought part of the hill and began digging in March 1900. The British School at Athens received the palace from Evans in 1926.
Minos Kalokairinos was the youngest son of a rich landowner. He dug 12 trial trenches over 55 m by 40 m. Knossos tickets now open the ground that he tested.
Heinrich Schliemann never reached the palace seen with Knossos tickets. In 1886 he hoped to buy the site, but the owners asked too much. He gave up in 1890 and died that year.
Arthur Evans set up the Cretan Exploration Fund and bought one quarter of the hill. The first dig season behind Knossos tickets opened with a parade of donkeys.
On day one, Evans used his cane, Prodger, to pick a spot to dig for water. The diggers hit an old well. Duncan Mackenzie, a Scot, kept the day book.
- Rain: Winter rain was dissolving mud-brick walls, so the team began restoring as they dug.
- Concrete: In 1922 Evans chose reinforced concrete and hired Piet de Jong.
- Critic: Evelyn Waugh wrote in 1929 that modern restorations crowded out original fragments.
Evans replaced Mackenzie with John Pendlebury, a 25-year-old archaeologist who wore a glass eye. The palace behind Knossos tickets still hosts a branch of the British School at Athens.
Which myths surround Knossos tickets?
Knossos tickets lead to the home of King Minos in Greek myth. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey name Minos as king of Knossos. No evidence shows that Minos was a real person. The tales also tell of a Minotaur and a Labyrinth.
In the Odyssey, Minos talks with Zeus every nine years and gets his laws from the god. The king linked to Knossos tickets also asks Poseidon for a snow-white bull, then keeps it.
As punishment, Poseidon makes Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos, fall in love with the bull. Daedalus builds her a hollow wooden cow, covered with real cowhide. Daedalus was a famous craftsman in Greek myth.
The Minotaur’s name joins Minos with the Greek word for bull, so it means “Bull of Minos”. Knossos tickets lead to his city, but on Crete the monster was called Asterion, which means “star”. The Minotaur was a monster with a bull head and a human body.
In the usual telling, Minos makes Athens send seven young men and seven young women every nine years. This pays for the death of his son Androgeus.
- Theseus: Sources say he killed the Minotaur with a sword, a club or bare hands.
- Labrys: Mayer suggested in 1892 that labyrinth comes from labrys, a double-bladed axe.
- Doubt: Beekes calls that link speculative and suggests laura, Greek for narrow street.
In the myths behind Knossos tickets, Daedalus told Ariadne how to escape the Labyrinth. He also buried Icarus on an island and named it Icaria. A labyrinth is a maze of winding paths.
What do the frescoes show for Knossos tickets holders?
Knossos tickets holders see wall paintings that were rebuilt from flakes of fallen plaster. Sometimes only 5% of a rebuilt area is original. The scenes include the Bull-Leaping Fresco, the Prince of the Lilies, La Parisienne and the Cup-Bearer.
A fresco is painted on wet lime plaster, so the colour becomes part of the wall. Experts dispute whether Cretan painters used wet plaster only, or dry plaster too. A fresco is a painting made on wet plaster.
The Bull-Leaping Fresco is the best-restored of a group of stucco (plaster) panels. No ancient evidence backs its scalloped edge, which the Swiss artist Gilliéron possibly added. Restoration means repairing old work so it looks closer to how it was.
The Prince of the Lilies is built from only nine fragments. The original is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. At the palace, holders of Knossos tickets meet a replica with flowers in the background.
La Parisienne is a fragment of the Camp Stool Fresco. Edmond Pottier named her because she looked like a modern Parisian woman. Beauty objects found at Knossos show Minoan women used make-up.
- Cup-Bearer: Only a man with a conical cup survives, from head to midriff.
- Dolphin Fresco: Dolphins swim in a balanced pattern, with fish between them and sponges at the edge.
- Ladies in Blue: Three women in mainly blue paint, restored again by Gilliéron’s son in 1927.
Gilliéron and his son worked for Evans at Knossos for three decades. Gilliéron rebuilt the Blue Boy as a boy, but study showed the figure was a monkey.
What lies around the site of Knossos tickets?
Knossos tickets open a site with far more than the main palace. The Little Palace, the Royal Villa, the Caravanserai, the South House and the Temple Tomb stand nearby. Villa Ariadne and a Roman villa add later chapters.
The Little Palace is the largest building after the main palace. A sacred road joined it to the theatre area, about 230 metres away. Mycenaeans later built an altar above a purification room.
The Royal Villa stands at the north-east edge of the palace, built into a cut in the hillside. A stone throne stood in a wall recess, which other villas lack. A villa is a large country house.
South of the palace behind Knossos tickets lies the Caravanserai. Experts read it as a guest house. A bridge joined it to the palace. The South House had three floors.
- Temple Tomb: It lies about 600 metres south of the palace.
- Villa Ariadne: It was built in 1906 and 1907.
- Roman villa: The Villa of Dionysos has 2nd-century AD mosaics.
After the Battle of Crete, Villa Ariadne was the German military governor’s headquarters for three years. The German surrender in 1945 was signed there. This land holds Minoan, Roman and wartime history. The Romans ruled Crete as part of their empire.
When is the best time of year for Knossos tickets?
Knossos tickets suit the sunny months from late spring to early autumn. Rain is rare then, and July gets only 0.8 mm. July is the sunniest month at Heraklion airport, with 384.4 hours of sunshine. Winter brings less sun.
Sunshine grows fast after winter. Late spring brings 300.7 hours and June brings 351.0 hours. September still gets 282.0 hours. January gets only 117.8 hours, so winter days are duller. Sunshine hours count the time the sun shines directly.
Knossos tickets in March meet an average high of 16.8 °C. It reaches 24.3 °C in late spring and 28.5 °C in June. Nights are coldest in February, at 9.2 °C.
Rain follows the seasons closely. December is the wettest month, with 82.2 mm of rain. February has 11.2 rainy days. By late spring, that drops to only 3.8 rainy days.
- Warm nights: August nights average 22.9 °C.
- UV index: This score for the sun’s strength averages 9 in late spring.
- Daylight: March days bring 11.9 hours of daylight.
Late spring and early autumn give Knossos tickets the best mix of sun, warmth and dry days. Winter adds rain and cuts the sunshine, so days feel cooler and wetter.
What do travelers want to know about Knossos tickets?
Knossos tickets raise six common questions. Travelers ask about the palace’s age and size, and where finds are kept. They also ask what Linear B is and how far the airport lies. The last asks where the word Minoan comes from.
How old is the palace behind Knossos tickets?
Experts date Minoan finds by pottery styles, because exact calendar dates are hard to fix. The ruins stayed visible, and in the Early Iron Age people held open-air worship there. The Classical city never built on top of the palace.
How big is the palace that Knossos tickets open?
The multi-level palace spans 2.2 hectares. Four wings stand around the central courtyard. Archaeologists can prove 800 rooms and estimate up to 1300 in all. A stairway area at the north-west edge is read as a theatre for about 500 people.
Where are the finds kept for Knossos tickets holders?
Nearly all finds from the palace sit in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. The Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos keeps historic collections from digs. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has the Minoan collection of Evans. Room V shows Linear A and Linear B writing. Heraklion is the largest city and capital of Crete.
What is Linear B for Knossos tickets holders?
Linear B is a writing system whose signs stand for syllables. It wrote Mycenaean Greek, the earliest known form of Greek. It is the only Bronze Age Aegean script that has been decoded. The Knossos tablets show 66 different scribes.
How far is Heraklion airport from the site of Knossos tickets?
Heraklion airport stands on the east side of the city, near Nea Alikarnassos. By car, Knossos is 10 to 15 minutes from the centre of Heraklion, not from the airport. City bus No. 2, called Knossos, runs from Heraklion to the site. An airport is a place where planes take off and land.
What does the word Minoan mean for Knossos tickets holders?
The word Minoan comes from King Minos, the ruler of Knossos in Classical Greek tradition. Evans made the word popular, and the scholar Karl Hoeck had suggested the idea earlier. The ancient Egyptians called the people of Crete the Keftiu.