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19. Heraklion - Agios Nikolaos (coastal road)
(see Map ofCrete, Heraklion
- Map of Crete, Agios Nikolaos)
The coastal national road from Iraklio to Agios Nikolaos is
wide, well-designed and ideal for fast riding. As far as Malia,
it follows the coast closely and serves the island’s biggest
tourist area - this means that there is a lot of traffic and
you shouldn’t go too fast on this section of the road.
It would also be better to avoid riding on this road at night,
because it is full of Irakliot and foreign drivers going to
Chersonisos (or Hersonissos) for a night out or coming home
from there, usually rather ‘merry’, if not inebriated,
after a few drinks.
Map of Crete. From Heraklion to Agios Nikolaos
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From Malia to Agios Nikolaos, there is much
less traffic on the road so you can accelerate with no trouble.
Just after Malia, the road leaves the coast, going in a south-easterly
direction, and runs along with the old Iraklio-Agios Nikolaos
road in the verdant Selinari ravine where you will enjoy a very
spectacular route. At some point, you will see in front of you
a huge wall of rock blocking the ravine on its south side. The
old road climbs over the top, while the new one goes through
the rock via a tunnel. As soon as you come out of the tunnel,
you face the cultivated valley of Neopolis through which the
road winds like a stream as it descents towards Agios Nikolaos,
crossing the old road over bridges and then running directly
alongside it. Five or six kilometres before Agios Nikolaos,
you will see two European style petrol stations, the best in
Crete, where it is worth making a stop for supplies and a bike
check before entering the town.
If you don’t want to ride all the distance in one go,
there are many places along this route, worth at least a short
visit, and some very interesting diversions.
First of all, there is Amnisos, one of the
two harbours of Minoan Knossos, built on the coast at the foot
of Mesovouni Hill, approximately 8 km east of Iraklio (there
are Greek/English signs on both the old road and the new motorway
that will lead you to the archaeological site). On the eastern
slope of the hill, archaeologist Spyros Marinatos discovered
in 1932 a luxurious Minoan villa dating back to 1600 BC, which
was called the Villa of Krinon after the well-known
fresco that was found here and is on exhibition today at the
Iraklio museum. At the foot of the hill on the north side, he
found a smaller building which he called the Port Authority,
and a little further to the west, an open-air temple with a
large round altar, dedicated to Zeus. Due west of the altar
are the remains of the jetty of the Minoan harbour, and today,
these are sunken beneath the surface of the sea. King Idomeneas
set off from here with his ships for the Trojan War, and Odysseus
stopped here during his adventurous journey on his way back
from Troy (Homer’s Odyssey, T.188-89).
After 26 km is Chersonisos (or Hersonissos),
the biggest and most organised summer resort in Crete. If you
haven’t been to Chersonisos, you don’t know what
chaos is. Mykonos is a girls’ school, Rhodes a hermitage
and Corfu a cemetery, by comparison! Just to list the bars and
hotels in Chersonisos would take ten pages.
Bar in Chersonissos
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But you don’t need a guide or suggestions to find your
way around in Chersonisos - all the buildings here are either
bars, discotheques, hotels, restaurants or tourists shops. The
choice is endless! There is also a wide, sandy beach at Chersonisos,
but most of the people lying on the sand are not sunbathing
but have simply fallen there flat out at dawn after the evening’s
revelries. All this is of course only in July and August, well,
maybe up to the middle of September. After this, Chersonisos
is like a deserted town.
It is rather improbable that you should want to visit Chersonisos
for its history, but if you are interested in such things, you
can see on the east side of the harbour right in front of the
seaside bars, the remains of the jetty of Greco-Roman Chersonisos,
then called Cherronisos. Only a few coins and scattered foundations
of houses have been saved from the even older town (Cherronisos
started off as the port of Lyttos). At the end of the small
peninsula (chersonisos) (from which the town took its name)
you can also see the foundations and the mosaic floor of a large
basilica of the 5th century, and also the marble Christian Altar
which was the lid of a Roman sarcophagus before it was recycled!
From an archaeological point of view, there are much more
interesting things for you to see a few kilometres along the
road at Malia. A huge tourist resort the same
size as (and perhaps a little bigger than) Chersonisos has developed
around the big sandy beach at Malia and is an open shrine to
the goddess Enjoyment, with orgies of feasting and ecstatic
dancing until morning! On its east side, however, far away from
the noise and the crowds, are the ruins of an important Minoan
palace whose name is not known and so it is called by convention
“The Palace of Malia”.
THE
PALACE OF MALIA
(Guarded archaeological site, open from 8.30 a.m. - 3.30
p.m. Closed on Mondays.)
One day around 1850, a villager
from Vrahasi ploughing his field here, in the narrow fertile
plain stretching between the sea and the mountain peak
of Selena, saw something glittering in the freshly-turned
earth. He picked it up and looked at it carefully. He
may not have understood that it was a piece of Minoan
jewellery, but he realised immediately that it was gold
and therefore valuable. So he took it to the town and
sold it to a goldsmith, who melted it down to make his
own jewellery with the gold...
The villager became rich overnight, but the secret got
out just as quickly. The place, which was named Hrisolakkos
(golden hole) after the treasures it was hiding, filled
up with illegal excavators.
The bees of Malia, Crete
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The gold objects they found had a value for them that
was totally financial and not at all archaeological. So
most of them ended up in the goldsmiths’ furnaces
as a raw material, although a few were sold to foreign
antiquities smugglers who, in this particular case, must
be considered as benefactors as they saved unique treasures
from certain destruction. It is considered probable that
the “Treasure of Aegina”, today to be found
in the British Museum, originated from here.
Sixty-five years later, when not even a stone was left
in its place at Hrisolakkos, the Archaeological Service
learned the news. It purchased the violated land in 1915
and immediately began excavations under the leadership
of the archaeologist I. Hatzidakis. After seven years
of systematic work, a wonderful Minoan Palace came to
light, totally plundered but in good condition.
The Palace of Malia  (whose
ancient name remains unknown) has absolutely the same
proportions as the palaces of Knossos and Phaestos. It
was built in around 1900 BC, suffered great damage in
the earthquake of 1700 BC but was rebuilt more splendidly
than before, and was completely destroyed in around 1450
BC. It developed around a large, paved Central Courtyard
(1) with an orientation from north-east to southwest.
The Palace of Malia, Crete
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The main entrance to the palace was to the south (2)
and you too will go in this way, but there were also entrances
to the east (3), north (4) and west (5). Of course it
had large storehouses (6) where wine and oil were stored
in enormous jars, whereas grains and other cereals were
probably kept in eight circular storehouses at the south-west
corner of the palace (7). The dining-room must have been
on the upper floor, on the northern side of the Central
Courtyard, above the area with the six big bases of the
columns (8). A narrow passage led to the northern courtyard
(9), from where another passage ended up at the Royal
Apartments Complex (10). A spacious room on the west side
of the Central Courtyard (11) must have been the feasting
area while directly behind this was the Temple of the
Palace (12), and further back still was probably one of
the kitchens (13). Directly north of these rooms was the
magnificent staircase (14) which ascended to the apartments
on the upper floor. In the south-west corner of the Central
Courtyard, you will see the first four steps of an even
wider staircase (15) that probably served in sacred ceremonies
because next to it was found a kernos, i.e. a round, wide
stone with 34 sculptured cavities of various diameters
where they probably placed (as an offering to the deity?)
the first fruits of the harvest.
A large and seemingly rich city grew up around the palace,
with many craftsmen, merchants, seamen and artists. Some
of its neighbourhoods have been excavated and you can
visit, following the paths marked on the plan. Directly
north of the palace are the city’s marketplace (Agora)
and an underground building of unknown use which was named
the Hypostyle Crypt, and was possibly a place for secret
meetings. At the north-east edge of the archaeological
site, isolated from the city’s neighbourhoods, is
the graveyard, the famous Hrisolakkos of the antiquities
smugglers. A piece of jewellery that escaped them (the
juxtaposed bees, see page 51) and was found by the French
archaeologists who have been digging here from 1922 onwards,
is enough to show the marvellous skill and aesthetics
of the Minoan goldsmiths. You can admire them at the Iraklio
Museum but you will also feel sad if you think how many
other similar masterpieces were melted down in the furnaces
of the antiquities smugglers...
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West of Malia as far as the cape of Agios Antonios and from
there to Agios Nikolaos, the coast is rocky and often precipitous
and the hinterland behind is one of the few ‘islets’
where the real character of the Cretan soil survives. Just like
the Vamos peninsula in the prefecture of Hania, this big triangular
piece of land north of the road from Malia to Agios Nikolaos
has avoided tourist development because it is lucky enough not
to have beaches and archaeological sites and to be situated
in a corner outside the tourist routes. There is of course the
jet set resort of Elounda on the east coast, but this is an
isolated complex that does not affect the rest of the region.
Xera Xyla Monastery, Crete
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There are also the ruins of an important Minoan city, Driros,
but this is near to Neopolis and most visitors don’t go
any further inland. Whichever road you take, you will go through
picturesque villages, most of which are unfortunately semi-abandoned,
and see impressive monasteries like the restored Moni Aretiou
north of the village of Karidi, the ruined Moni Xera
Xyla, whose cells have been taken over by a shepherd
to use as a sheepfold (!), and the Monastery of Agios Antonios
on the Cape of Drepani. You will find few rooms to let in the
poor villages, but you can stay at the village coffee-house
for a coffee or a very tasty plate of fried potatoes, and it
is very likely that the taverna owner will find a room to put
you up in for one night.
Elounda is the most ‘jet set’
holiday centre in Crete but without there being any special
reason for this. The
place is very dry, the coast is rocky, there is no airport or
port nearby, neither is there any traditional or historic village
that would act as a magnet. Just a few poor villagers lived
here and struggled all year round with their olive trees, and
they supplemented their income by extracting from the neighbouring
hill a type of fine-grained emery, the so-called whetstone from
which they made knife sharpeners.
Elounda, Crete
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These poor people saw their barren fields acquire enormous
value from the one day to the next when the first big hotel
complexes started to be built. Today, some ten luxury and ‘A’
category hotels are gathered here, where the cheapest double
room costs €300 a night, and to stay in the most expensive,
you will have to sell your motorcycle in order to walk over
the threshold! It is completely improbable that you will want
to stay here, but in the rare event you are on honeymoon or
you’ve just won the lottery, we will mention some of them.
Astir Palace Elounda, Elounda Mare, Elounda Ilion, Elounda Beach,
Elounda Village, Elounda Marmin. Elounda may not have even ten
metres of beach worth speaking of, but it does have dozens of
swimming pools, tennis courts and golf courses where you may
meet select members of the financial and political aristocracy
or even the Prime Minister in person! If you are an ordinary
mortal, there are also some cheap rooms in Elounda, but it is
not necessary to tell you how marginalised you will feel staying
in these!
Directly opposite Elounda is the deserted island of Spinaloga,
which many years ago was not an island but a peninsula that
was joined by a narrow sandy isthmus to the opposite shore.
The Greco-Roman city of Olous was built on
this isthmus, but land subsidence sent it beneath the sea. Archaeological
excavations have never taken place here and the only things
you can see from ancient Olous (on a day when there are no waves)
are some foundations of houses in the shallow water.
Spinalonga, Crete
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The harbour at Spinaloga
was the safest harbour in Crete not only because it was not
hit by bad weather, but also because its only (at that time)
northern entrance was protected by an impregnable fortress built
by the Venetians in 1570. But at the beginning of this century,
French seamen dug the canal which you can see today, separating
Spinaloga from the mainland without there being any important
reason for so doing, except perhaps their vanity in creating
an island! Today there is a small bridge joining Elounda to
Spinaloga. The only road on the island is a rough dirt road
(D4) which goes through the bushes and ends up at a small pebbled
beach on the east side, a rather inconvenient but quiet spot
for rough camping. In order to see the fortress of Spinaloga
(which is not actually on Spinaloga but on the small rocky islet
of Kalydona, north of Spinaloga) you have to take a boat from
Elounda or Agios Nikolaos.
| Source
of the information on this page : “Unexplored
Crete”, Road Editions. For more
guidebooks and maps of Greece, click here.
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