Archeological Museum Heraklion Crete

The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion is considered one of the most interesting and complete in all of Greece where the impressive Cretan history is preserved.

A spectacular collection of Minoan art awaits you with over 15,000 artifacts that tell the life of 5,500 years going from the Neolithic to the Greek-Roman period.

Collected over the years and from numerous archaeological excavations between settlements, villas, cemeteries and sanctuaries throughout the island of Crete, it was built between 1933 and 1937 by the project of Karantinos right above a Franciscan convent of the time Venetian destroyed by the earthquake of 1856.

Arranged on three floors, we find on the ground floor the section dedicated to the Minoan civilization, a second wing to the Greco-Roman period, and a part of the ground floor is dedicated to sculpture for most of the Greco-Roman cycle.

The first part of the collection precisely the rooms I and II are dedicated to the Pre-Palatial period which groups the Neolithic period up to the early Bronze Age (6000-1900 BC), whose objects were recovered from the foundations of the Palace of Knossos and from the tombs of Tholos. Refined jewels, pottery and terracotta votive figures, finely decorated like the depictions of athletes who challenged the bulls by taking them by the horns as if they were dumbbells and with contempt for danger they faced animals to prove their courage. The most famous piece is the gold pendant found in the necropolis of Malia with two bees holding pollen grains between their paws, a filigree cage on their heads and a drop of honey between their mouths.

In the third room, on the other hand, the finds from the early palatial period ranging from 1900 to 1700 BC are kept. Most of the findings come from Phaistos and the most important artifact is "the royal dinner service", a set of vases, plates , bowls and containers in polychrome ceramic with original designs with fish, flowers or fruits.

In the fourth and fifth rooms, there are the testimonies of the second palace of Knossos, and those of Festus, Malia and Zakros. A wooden model of the entire building will give you the awareness of how majestic the settlement was, while another model of a single section of the building was able to make archaeologists discover the dimensions of the columns which, for example, were wider at the top. than the base. And also vases with drawings of animals, decorations with the bull's head and the most important find of all the Phaistos Disc, a simple 15 cm terracotta disk engraved in a spiral with hieroglyphs not yet discovered but which certainly do not represent the Minoan script.

In the sixth room relics of everyday life such as terracotta plates and bowls. Four rare pieces such as the statue of the acrobat depicted in a gymnastic rush, a black soapstone vase called of the boxers representing the fighters, the mural fresco of the bullfighting the acrobatic jump over a bull where the athlete taking the horns of the animal will force him to turn his head upwards, giving man the necessary thrust to do somersault and acrobatic leaps, and finally a finely carved ivory bracelet with motifs related to bullfighting.

In the seventh and eighth rooms, objects used during rituals in sanctuaries as statuettes representing men and women including the Goddess of Snakes, symbol of civilization. And again the stone bull's head with gold-colored horns, the Minos ring and a rhyton (a container) with a lioness head hole.

Also on the first floor we find the magnificent frescoes of the Palace of Knossos such as the swimming dolphins that was in the megaron (they are the rooms) of the queen, rather than the ladies in blue or the saffron collector.

And here we are on the ground floor which houses the sculptures of the Greco-Roman period. Beautiful statues of Pluto and Persephone with the cerberus the three-headed dog, that of Demeter with the cornucopia of abundance up to the statues of Artemis and Apollo in the act of killing the sons of Niobe.

The glorious history of Crete contained within the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion to testify to the liveliness of the economic, social and artistic life of the past. A must and undoubtedly included in the list of things to see in Crete, it would truly be a missed opportunity unless your intention is to return.