The Minoan Palace of Knossos lies at a distance of 5 km from the town centre of Iraklion along the road to Archanes.
The imposing Palace is built on the hill of "Kefala" next to the river "Kairatos", in a site which was admired for its natural advantages, the strong position, good water supplies, access to the sea and proximity to a large fertile forest. The forest that produced the "Cephalonian Pine" a tree that supplied the beams and the columns for the construction of the Palace.
The site itself includes the Palace of Knossos, The Minoan Houses, the "Little Palace", the "Royal Villa", the villa "Dionysos" with famous Roman mosaics, the south Royal Temple - Tomb and the "Caravanserai".
It is well known that the area lies on a great seismic site. The Palace had been destroyed time after time and always emerged from its ruins more magnificent than before until the last time that there was no recovery.
Excavations showed that the area was inhabited since the Neolithic times (6000 BC and perhaps even earlier) and verified that the Neolithic levels of Knossos are amongst the deepest in Europe.
An important Pre Palace already existed on this Neolithic site as far as 3000 BC. while the first Palace was built around 2000 BC and destroyed 300 years later.
On the same site a new Palace was built, more elaborate than the previous, only to be severely damaged from an earthquake one hundred years latter.
During this period we see the development of a series of satellite buildings like the "Little Palace", the "Royal Villa" and the "South House". Knossos has now developed into a large city whose population - judged by the adjacent cemeteries - must have not been less than 100,000 inhabitants.
The Palace now lives and prospers until the next disaster of around 1450 BC connected to the volcanic eruption of Santorini. Following this event, it is restored once more and used by the Achaean sovereign until at least 1380 BC although other city states in Crete had already been destroyed.
After its final destruction the palace was not used again except for the "temple of Rhea" in later historical times.
Knossos survived through the historical times as a great city - state until the first Byzantine times. Its final decline came during the Middle Ages where it was diminished to an unimportant small village with the name "Makrys Toihos".
