Heraklion airport transfers and travel guide

Things to see in Heraklion

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  Knossos

  About 5 km south of the centre

  Knossos became the largest and best-known centre of the Minoan civilisation, and it is one of the most visited archaeological sites in Greece. Settlement on Kephala hill began around 7000 BC; the first palace was built around 1900 BC, and a major destruction by fire is conventionally dated to about 1350 BC. Arthur Evans began large-scale excavations in 1900 and rebuilt parts of the palace using reinforced concrete and colour. In later Greek tradition, the complex plan of the palace was remembered as the Labyrinth.

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  Heraklion Archaeological Museum

  City centre

  The museum holds by far the most important and complete collection of artefacts of the Minoan civilisation, and it is regarded as the best in the world for Minoan art. It began in 1883 as a simple collection of antiquities. The present building, designed by the architect Patroklos Karantinos, went up between 1937 and 1940, with skylights that bring daylight into the galleries. Most of the museum closed for renovation in 2006 and reopened in May 2013.

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  Koules Fortress

  Old harbour, city centre

  The Koules, or Castello a Mare — “Fort on the Sea” in Italian — stands at the entrance to Heraklion’s old port. Work began after the Byzantine tower there was demolished in 1523, and the fort was completed in 1540. Its walls are up to 8.7 m thick, and its two storeys hold 26 rooms, once used as barracks, a prison, storerooms, a church, a mill and a bakery. The Ottomans took the fort in 1669; today it is restored, open to the public and occasionally hosts art exhibitions.

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  Spinalonga

  Gulf of Elounda, near Plaka

  Spinalonga is a small, rocky island at the northern mouth of the Gulf of Elounda, separated from the village of Plaka by around 750 m of water. In 1579 the Venetians laid the foundation stone of its fortifications, and in 1715 the island was given to the Ottomans by agreement. From 1904 to 1957 it was a leper colony, a history retold in Victoria Hislop’s novel The Island. Tourist boats leave regularly from Plaka, Elounda and Agios Nikolaos, and the island receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

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  Matala

  75 km south-west of Heraklion

  Matala is a village on a bay whose cliffs are riddled with artificial caves, created in the Neolithic Age. It was the port of Phaistos in Minoan times and, under the Romans, the port of Gortys. In the 1960s the caves were occupied by hippies, who were later driven out by the church and the military junta. That chapter is now celebrated at the three-day Matala Beach Festival, held every June since 2011.