The Minoan Palace of Zakros, 14 October

On Sunday we explored the ruins of the Zakros Minoan Palace. The palace was about a five-minute walk back down the dirt road towards the beach. About 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, Zakros was a bustling port for the Minoans. Ships came and went here from distant civilizations on the Asian and African continents. Visualizing the ancient commerce and influence of this area takes a vivid imagination today. The paved road ended in from of the taverns on the beach. The road to our place and the palace turns to barely one lane and is described as “dirty,” not dirt, by locals for its unpaved and rutted condition. One to two story cottages are scattered along the lane between olive groves and vegetable gardens. The olive trees lean permanently inland on twisted trunks suggesting strong winds can blow, but today only a light breeze blows in from the sea. A tiny, whitewashed church trimmed in sky blue sits on the hill above the palace. We were given a one page brochure with a paragraph on the palace’s history and another on its discovery in the 1960s. We had to work to imagine the once vibrant life within the palace. There was also a diagram outlining the layout of the former rooms and courtyards. We spent the afternoon wandering among the remnants of stone walls and peering into crevices. We played a game where we would choose a crumbling artifact and all try to guess its function explaining our thought process to one another. A chain link fence appeared to have been placed indiscriminately around the palace because the ruins extended beyond the fence on all sides into the olive groves of the modern neighbors. The placement of the fence highlighted for me the futility of trying to separate ancient from current. One civilization always builds on the foundations of another. The four of us discussed why the Minoans chose Kato Zakros specifically for their palace. We looked at how the surrounding hills were brown, craggy and scrubby, but the valley was green and sloped gently to the sea. We had read the Minoan era was peaceful. The lack of fortification at the palace and the valley location, instead of cliff top as many castles we’ve seen this trip, seemed to support this claim. Doug and I discussed how viewing the ruins of successive powerful and flourishing civilizations reminds us of the temporal nature of even the greatest empires.