Crete travel: on the trail of gods and heroes UK

The ‘fabled’ Minoan city of Knossos in Crete

(Image credit: Georgios Tsichlis/Alamy Stock Photo)

With its glorious mountain landscapes and distinctive archaeological heritage, Crete is a jewel among Mediterranean islands – but it gets crowded in summer. If you go in early spring, however, says Alec Russell in the FT, you’ll find something approaching solitude in these wondrous places; the wildflowers will be out, and the weather should be good for walking. Start your tour in the port of Heraklion – the island’s capital – where the archaeological museum is a good historical primer, with fabulous exhibits (including an “exquisite” golden frog) from the Minoan civilisation, the Bronze Age power that flourished here more than a millennium before the heyday of classical Greece. You might stay nearby at Olive Green, a “delightful boutique eco-hotel”.

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Twenty minutes inland lies the “fabled” Minoan city of Knossos, from which some later Greek myths, including the minotaur story, probably derived. In spring, it’s wonderfully quiet, with nothing to disturb the peace along the “royal road” (the oldest known paved road in Europe) but “the occasional squawk of peacocks”. Also revelatory is Eleutherna, 26 miles west, where in the 1980s archaeologists uncovered a settlement from Greece’s “dark ages” – between the Minoans and the preclassical era – which cast light on the little-known civilisation in which the Homeric epics have their roots.

Nearby is Kapsaliana, an abandoned village that has become a charming hotel. It lies within easy reach of the old monastery of Arkadi; in 1866, rebels seeking independence blew themselves up here, rather than surrender to an Ottoman siege. The monastery’s “stunning” Venetian baroque church survived the explosion. Kapsaliana is also a good base from which to strike out on walks in the island’s mountains, after which you might move on to a beach hotel such as Domes Zeen, in Chania, to round off your stay.