Winter Stories · All winter · History
Knossos on a quiet day
In summer the queue at Knossos starts before the gate opens. On a weekday in winter you can stand alone in front of the dolphins.
Knossos is an hour and three-quarters from the house, across the island to the north coast. It is the one site on Crete that everyone visits, which is the reason to go in winter: on a weekday in January the palace is open, the light is soft, and the rooms are quiet.
The frescoes on the site are reproductions; the originals are in the archaeological museum in Heraklion, fifteen minutes away, which has the Bull-Leapers, the snake goddesses and the Phaistos disc, and in winter has room to stand in front of them.
Make a day of it: Knossos in the morning, the museum after lunch, back over the mountains before dark. The road climbs past the foot of Psiloritis, and in January there may be snow on the pass.
