Today we invite you to a virtual tour of the Knossos Palace, which is located on the island of Crete . The age of this architectural monument dates back to the XVII century before the beginning of our chronology, in other words, it is almost 4 000 years old! It is in the Palace of Knossos that there is the legendary labyrinth of the Minotaur, of which you have probably heard thanks to many ancient legends. The former wealth of these places can be judged by the scale of this building and the archaeological excavations that were made in these places. Knossos Palace, which is located on the island of Crete, is the eighth wonder of the world. And such an honorary title is appropriated to this majestic structure quite deservedly.
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General information
Who knows what would be the fate of this place today, if it were not for the case that allowed the English archaeologist Arthur Evans to discover the palace. So how was the legendary Knossos palace found on the island of Crete? The attention of the archaeologist was attracted by a mysterious hill, which, with its outlines, vaguely resembled the ruins of an ancient building. After a number of finds in the vicinity of the Kefal hill, full-scale excavations began, which later spread from him in all directions. In the course of 30 years of work, scientists initially believed that they were digging out the ancient city, but it turned out to be the majestic Knossos palace of King Minos. Also, thanks to these excavations, a completely new culture was discovered, which was later dubbed the Minoan. To understand why at first the architecture of Knossos Palace was adopted for the whole city, it is enough to imagine a building with an area of 16 000 square meters!
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Palace of King Minos
During the excavations, many secrets of the Palace of Knossos were discovered, like the one that the Minotaur maze really existed. After all, as it turned out, the whole building had a great similarity with the multilevel labyrinth, where, as a result, the monstrous child of the wife of Minos lived. The castle was built around a stone-paved courtyard, which measures 50x50 meters. It consisted of chaotically placed buildings that piled one over one, and were connected by long corridors. A lot of moves have been dug up, which go deep into the ground, which allows to think that there were many other underground rooms.
In the Palace of Knossos lived and artisans, and know. This can be judged from the differences in decoration in different parts of the room. In the wards of the nobility, many artifacts of gold were found, and these parts of the Palace of Knossos were decorated with paintings. Wherever they lived, the tsar and the queen were distinguished by a special luxury. In these rooms wall murals of the Palace of Knossos were met especially often. Such patterns covered both the walls of buildings and the columns. The faces in the pictures are drawn very thinly, and differ significantly from each other, which makes one think that they were written from life.
This place has another amazing feature - the complete absence of windows. But at the same time in the Palace of Knossos it was always very light, because the windows replaced light wells. They are a hole in the roof, which sometimes passed through several floors to the row. It is believed that in this way the architects provided not only lighting, but also high-quality ventilation of the premises. The heating of this huge room was carried out with the help of large portable furnaces, which were constantly moved around the rooms. Just imagine, inside this palace at one time lived not only the king and retinue, but the whole population of the island of Crete!
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So, where is the majestic Knossos palace of King Minos? To get here, you need to drive just five kilometers from the Cretan city of Heraklion . In this city there is Nikos Kazantzakis airport, where direct flights fly.