Zakros: the Minoan palace and the Gorge of the Dead

About the route

The approach to Zakros is one of the finest in the east of the island: on one side the bay opens out, on the other rise the rock walls of the Gorge of the Dead (Farangi ton Nekron). The name has nothing to do with any danger to walkers. It recalls Minoan burials: the natural caves and recesses in the walls of the ravine served the people of ancient Zakros as tombs, and numerous burials have been found in them. The gorge was also, from the earliest times, the natural line of communication between the harbour at Kato Zakros and the settlements of the hill country – the Minoans themselves laid a slab-paved road some three metres wide, complete with gutter, to link the town with its port.

Ano Zakros – the upper village

The starting point is the hill village of Ano Zakros, long known for its abundant springs. The water that issues from the surrounding mountains is of excellent quality and once drove a whole series of watermills – at the beginning of the 20th century there were eleven in the village, grinding corn, fulling cloth and helping to press oil. The villagers built their schools, the road, the water supply and the electricity network between 1901 and 1961 largely with their own unpaid labour, and in 1932 and 1936 they founded co-operatives for cheese and for olive oil. Kato Zakros, down on the coast, is about seven kilometres away.

The gorge begins at Ano Zakros and descends to Kato Zakros, where it meets the sea not far from the palace; the ravine in fact runs between the upper and lower parts of the ancient site. The path forms part of the European long-distance route E4 – indeed its very last stage: the trail that sets out in the west of Europe and crosses the Mediterranean lands comes to an end here at Kato Zakros. The stream bed is fed by seasonal watercourses; plane trees, oaks, wild olives and oleander grow on the slopes, along with a number of rare plants, and there are fossils in the rock. Wild goats and birds of prey are a common sight, and after rain springs break out in the bed and the stream runs. The gorge is popular with climbers too. It lies within the Sitia UNESCO Geopark, in which more than 170 caves have been recorded – among them, close by, the stalactite cave of Pelekita on the coast north of Kato Zakros. Stout shoes, protection from the sun and plenty of drinking water are essential; in the hot months it is wise to set out early.

The palace of ancient Zakros

At Kato Zakros stood one of the four great palatial centres of Minoan Crete, alongside Knossos, Phaistos and Malia. Its sheltered harbour, the last on the island for ships bound east, tied Zakros by sea to Cyprus, the Syrian coast and Egypt; the finds include elephant tusks, faience, copper – some of it in the form of the great “oxhide” ingots in which the metal was traded – and other precious raw materials from the East, as well as Egyptian stone vessels, two of them bowls of the Early Dynastic period that were already antiques when they reached Crete. The palace was therefore not merely the residence of a ruler but the administrative, religious and commercial centre of eastern Crete. Its plan resembles that of the other Minoan palaces: round a central court of about 30 by 12 metres were grouped rooms for ceremony, storage, crafts and administration – the shrines in the west wing, the living quarters in the east, workshops to the south and service rooms to the north.

There were settlements here long before the palace; the site was first occupied around 2000 BC. The palace complex arose in the Middle Minoan period, c. 1900 BC; about 1700 BC it was destroyed by a severe earthquake, and it was rebuilt around 1600 BC. It went on developing thereafter, but c. 1450 BC, in the period of catastrophes that has been linked with the eruption of the volcano of Thera and the upheavals that followed, it perished in a fire and was never rebuilt as a political centre. People continued to live on the site in a modest way until about 1200 BC, when it was finally abandoned. It is precisely for this reason that Zakros largely escaped plundering.

The ruins were first recorded in 1851 by the British naval surveyor Thomas Spratt, and Arthur Evans came to look at them in 1894 and again in 1896. The first limited excavations were undertaken in 1901 by the Englishman David Hogarth for the British School at Athens, with the backing of the Cretan Exploration Fund; he uncovered a number of houses of the town but narrowly missed the palace. Some of what he found was presented to him by the Cretan government and is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Only from 1961 did the Greek archaeologist Nikolaos Platon, in systematic excavations financed by American patrons, discover the palace and the town around it; he worked here until 1992, and his son Lefteris Platon has carried on since. Figures for the area uncovered range from about 6,500 to more than 8,000 square metres, with some 250 to 300 rooms on several levels – the new palace alone is put at about 8,000 square metres and around 150 rooms. The discoveries included royal apartments, shrines, storerooms, workshops, cisterns and water conduits, halls for ceremonial gatherings and a treasury – the only unplundered one in Minoan Crete – with ritual vessels of rock crystal, Egyptian alabaster, faience and obsidian. In 2025 Zakros was inscribed, with other Minoan palatial centres, on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The finds also include painted vases, amphorae, seals – mostly of steatite – and clay tablets with inscriptions in Linear A; in one vessel there were even olives that after some 3,500 years had kept their flesh, and a stone unguent jar has a handle in the shape of a dog. Bronze tools, loom weights and no fewer than seven winepresses speak of the working life of the place, and one large storage jar carries a Linear A inscription that appears to record 32 measures of wine. The greater part of the finds is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, with further material in the Archaeological Museum of Sitia and in Agios Nikolaos. After a visit to the excavation, the bay of Kato Zakros, with its handful of tavernas on the pebble beach, is the natural place to rest.