Phaistos Palace: Minoan Power in the Mesara Plain

The Minoan palace of Phaistos stands on the eastern end of a ridge in south-central Crete, about 60 kilometres south of Heraklion, looking out over the Mesara Plain, the largest stretch of fertile farmland on the island. It was the second great palace of Minoan Crete after Knossos, a building of some 8,400 square metres raised in terraces above the plain, with the bulk of Mount Ida, or Psiloritis, rising to the north. Unlike Knossos it was never reconstructed, and its setting is as much a part of the visit as its walls: from the palace you see the whole territory it controlled. On our Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus tour we spend Day 8 in the south of Crete, at Phaistos and in the landscape around it.

The Mesara Plain as Phaistos’s setting

The Mesara is a long, broad plain running east to west across the south of Crete, between the mountains of Ida to the north and the lower Asterousia range that separates it from the Libyan Sea to the south. It is the largest fertile area on the island, and in the Bronze Age it was dotted with small settlements and with the distinctive circular tombs, known as tholos tombs, that the Minoans built for their dead.

Phaistos sits at the western end of the plain, on a ridge called Kastri. The position is commanding. To the east the plain stretches away towards the horizon; to the north rises Psiloritis, at 2,456 metres the highest mountain on Crete; to the west lies the coast, a few kilometres away. From the palace, the people who ran it could see the land whose harvests filled its storerooms. People had lived on the ridge since the Neolithic, long before the first palace was built.

The layout of Phaistos palace

Phaistos had two palaces, one built on top of the other. The first was built early in the second millennium BC and was damaged and rebuilt several times before a major destruction. Around 1700 BC a new palace was built, shifted slightly to the east of the old one, and this second palace stood until it was destroyed, perhaps by earthquake, in the fifteenth century BC. It was never rebuilt as a palace.

One of the pleasures of Phaistos is that both phases can be seen. The Italian archaeologists who excavated here, led by Federico Halbherr and Luigi Pernier from 1900 and later by Doro Levi from 1950, preserved substantial parts of the first palace alongside the second, so you can see how the builders of the later palace reused and reshaped the site. Unlike Knossos, nothing here was rebuilt in concrete.

The palace is arranged on terraces descending the ridge. At the lower level, a paved court on the west side is edged by broad, shallow steps, a theatre-like area that may have been used for gatherings or ceremonies. From here a monumental staircase rises to a grand entrance, a propylon, that led into the heart of the palace. Beyond lies the central court, the organising space of the whole building, with wings of rooms around it. The finest rooms, to the north, looked out towards Mount Ida.

Kamares cave and the pottery of the palace

High on the slopes of Psiloritis, on the mountain that fills the view north from the palace, is the Kamares cave, a sacred cave used by the Minoans and probably a cult centre for Phaistos and the Mesara. It gave its name to Kamares ware, a very fine pottery of the early palace period, painted in white, red and orange on a dark ground, with walls sometimes as thin as eggshell. Some of the best examples were found in the cave itself, and the finest pieces have been found mainly at palace sites such as Phaistos and Knossos, which suggests they were made in or for the palaces.

The connection between the palace below and the sacred cave on the mountain above is one of the clearest examples in Crete of how Minoan religion was woven into the landscape. Many of the finest finds from Phaistos, including its Kamares ware, are now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, which the tour visits two days earlier.

Where was the Phaistos Disc found?

In a basement room on the north side of the palace complex, where Luigi Pernier found it on 3 July 1908. The disc is a round tablet of fired clay about 16 centimetres across, stamped on both sides with a spiral of 242 signs pressed into the clay with individual stamps. Its script has never been deciphered, and with no other example to compare it with, it may never be. The disc itself is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum; at Phaistos you can see the part of the palace where it was found.

Hagia Triada and the port of Kommos

Phaistos did not stand alone. A few kilometres to the west, on a lower slope closer to the sea, lies Hagia Triada, a Minoan site with a richly built villa and a small town. It was not a palace, but it was clearly an important administrative centre: it has produced around 150 tablets in Linear A, the largest group from any Minoan site, along with some of the finest objects in the Heraklion museum, including the Harvester Vase, with its procession of men in relief, and the painted limestone sarcophagus that is the only Minoan object to show a funeral ritual in narrative scenes.

On the coast to the south-west was Kommos, the harbour that served Phaistos and Hagia Triada. Excavations since 1976 have uncovered large buildings, including one with long galleries open to the sea that may have housed ships, and more imported pottery than at any other Bronze Age site in the Aegean, including jars from Egypt and the Levant. Kommos is not open to visitors, but it explains why the Mesara looked outward: Phaistos, Hagia Triada and Kommos together formed a network that linked the farmland of the plain to the trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean.

Phaistos alongside, not beneath, Knossos

It is tempting to see Phaistos as a smaller version of Knossos, and in size it was, at about two-thirds of the area of the larger palace. But it is better understood as the centre of its own region. Knossos controlled the north-central coast and its hinterland; Phaistos controlled the Mesara and its outlet to the south coast. Each had its own storerooms, its own administration and its own links to the outside world, and the same is true of Malia, on the north coast to the east, which the tour visits the day before.

Greek myth preserved a memory of this. In later tradition, Phaistos was associated with Rhadamanthys, a brother of Minos, just as Malia was associated with another brother, Sarpedon. These stories belong to legend, but they reflect a sense that Crete had more than one centre of power. After the palace period, Phaistos became a Greek city in its own right, minting its own coins, until it was destroyed in the Hellenistic period by its larger neighbour, Gortyn.

How much walking does Phaistos involve?

A moderate amount, with steps. The palace is built on terraces down the slope of a ridge, so a visit involves climbing and descending stone stairways and walking on uneven paving and earth paths. The site is exposed, with little shade in the middle of the day, so a hat, water and sturdy shoes are essential. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2, Moderate: three to five hours of activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground.

Reading the landscape on the south Crete day

Day 8 is as much about the landscape as about the palace. After Phaistos, the route continues through the foothills of Ida to the mountain village of Zaros, known for its spring water, and the monastery of Agios Nikolaos at the mouth of the Rouvas Gorge, before crossing the island to Chania for the night. On the way, watch for the shape of the land: the flat, fertile Mesara, the steep wall of Ida, the passes between them. They explain why the Minoans built where they did.

The next day turns to a later Crete, with the Venetian harbours of Rethymno and Chania, and the day after that we fly to Rhodes, where the tour moves forward into the Middle Ages at the Palace of the Grand Master, the headquarters of the Knights of St John. For the broader history of Crete, see our guide to Crete’s history, and for how the whole journey fits together, our Eastern Mediterranean islands itinerary.

Standing on the ridge at Phaistos, with the plain spread out below and the mountain behind, it is easy to understand why a palace stood here for so long. To see it with a guide, as the third of three Minoan palaces in three days, in a small group of 6 to 14 travellers, explore the Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus small group tour.