Winter Stories · February to March · History
Phaistos, with the plain gone green
The Minoan palace sits on a ridge over the Messara. After the winter rains the plain below it turns green and yellow, and the site is almost empty.
Phaistos is thirty minutes from the house, on a low ridge at the western end of the Messara plain. It was the second palace of Minoan Crete, and unlike Knossos it was never reconstructed, so what you walk on is what was found: the great staircase, the courts, the storerooms with their jars.
Go between February and March. The rains have come, the plain below is green with the olive groves standing dark in it, and the wild flowers are out along the paths. The site is open daily and in winter you may share it with a handful of people.
On the way back, Gortyn is ten minutes further east: the Roman capital of Crete, with the law code cut into its stone wall and an olive tree growing through the ruins.
