Return to Home Page Harrys Greece Guide

Crete's Lasithi Prefecture Overview continued Page Ten

Minoan Gournia

map showing gournia et alGoing back down to the coast road, you come to Istro, a resort with a hotel that hangs on the edge of the cliff and has its own very nice sandy beach in a cove below. Most likely you can just walk through the grounds and go on down and no one will stop you. A little further on you come to the site of Gournia (open Tues-Sun 8:30am-3pm, 1.45euros). This site (pic below), known as 'the Pompeii of Minoan Crete' is the best-preserved Minoan town.

gournia todayMany small houses with cobbled alleys and stairways surround a square, with one more luxurious house that was probably that of the town ruler, sometimes referred to as a palace, though the entire place is on a much smaller scale than the famous Palace complexes. Most of the houses, which likely had more than the one-story that remained, were made of stone on the lower parts of walls and mud-brick above, with plaster and reeds for the roofs. Many kind of crafts are seen to have been practiced in this town, evidenced by tools and materials discovered there, among them work with clay, metal, and wood.

The site was occupied as early as the third millennium BC, but the town is from the late Minoan period, around 1550 BC, the town was destroyed by fire around 1225 BC and never truly rebuilt, though there was some of this during Mycenaean times.

Continue Lasithi Prefecture: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18