Makrygialos: the long beach and two ancient country houses

Makrygialos: the long beach between mountains and sea

Makrygialos (Μακρύ Γιαλός) is a seaside village on the south coast of Lasithi, on the road between Sitia and Ierapetra, which lies about 25 kilometres further west. Its name means “long beach” and comes from the extended strip of sand that runs in front of the village. Administratively it has belonged since 2011 to the municipality of Ierapetra; the district that bears its name, with its string of coastal hamlets and hill villages, had some 2,600 inhabitants at the census of 2021. Today there are tavernas, small hotels and a fishing harbour, from which the excursion boats for the island of Koufonisi also put out in summer. Behind the image of the holiday resort, however, lies a history that begins in Minoan times.

The main beach runs for more than a kilometre and is reckoned the longest shallow sandy beach in eastern Crete. Its eastern part is of fine, pale sand and shelves so gently into the water that it suits families with children especially well; the neighbouring coves offer shingle and rocky shore, and further beaches – Diaskari, Langada, Amoudi – follow along the coast on either hand. The sea here is generally calm, and the mountains screen the coast from the north winds. Makrygialos therefore lends itself as much to long swims as to a walk along the water’s edge, for those who want to see not only the open holiday zone but small, almost untouched stretches of shore as well.

The Minoan country house of Plakakia

West of the village, at the locality of Plakakia, a Minoan country house of the Late Minoan period was discovered; it is dated to about 1480–1425 BC – the phase archaeologists call Late Minoan IB – and it perished in a fire, apparently after it had already been looted. It was excavated by the archaeologist Kostis Davaras in 1973 and 1977. In plan it resembles a scaled-down model of a palace: round a central court were arranged paved rooms, courts, service wings and areas that served the administration of the surrounding estates. The court, aligned north–south like those of the palaces, measures 6 by 12.5 metres – exactly a quarter of their size – and had colonnades on the north and north-east; at its northern end stood a large altar with a bench facing it. The storerooms of the west wing were built of mud brick on stone footings, and a room six metres square in the east wing may have been a hall for ritual banquets, which is why Davaras thought of the building as a “cult villa”. Pottery vessels and figurines are among the finds, together with sherds of the Marine Style, tripod cooking pots and a stone anchor, perhaps a votive; they are shown in the Archaeological Museum of Agios Nikolaos. The house controlled agricultural production and the sea route along the south coast.

The most unusual find is a seal of steatite showing a sacred ship: on board one can make out an altar, a sacred tree – a palm – rising like a mast, and at the prow a priestess with her fist raised in a gesture of adoration. This image links the house not only with the economy but with cult practice; ritual ships of this kind were previously known chiefly from Egypt. The seal may have served as the mark of an owner or of an institution, and the ship is a reminder that for the Minoans the sea was not a frontier but a road between communities and sanctuaries.

The Roman villa of Katovigli

At Katovigli, close to the harbour, a large Roman country seat has been uncovered, which the archaeologist Nikolaos Papadakis has been investigating since 1977. The complex covered about a hectare and a half: its thirty-seven rooms and spaces were grouped round an elongated open court and were fitted out with piped water, an extensive bath suite, open-air pools, mosaic floors and marble facing on walls and floors; a cistern and a burial chamber belonged to it too. The entrance was paved with a mosaic of black and white pebbles in geometric patterns framed by ivy leaves. The baths occupied the south wing, with a horseshoe-shaped outdoor pool lined with marble and entered by steps, rooms floored with mosaics of interlaced circles, and a hypocaust whose fifty-six little pillars once carried the heated floor; water reached them from the tanks through a closed system of pipes. This was no simple farmhouse but a rich estate, bound up with control of the land and the riches of the sea. The finds range from the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD, with the main life of the house falling between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD; hardly any movable objects came to light – the villa was probably plundered by pirates as early as late Roman or Byzantine times.

The finds show that the coast lived on in Roman times too. More than a thousand years lie between the Minoan country house and the Roman villa, yet both buildings made use of the same favourable landscape: the fertile valley on the bay, sheltered by mountains and open to the sea routes.

Analipsi, Pefki and the ways of the coast

From Makrygialos it is a short detour to the beach of Analipsi, which adjoins it immediately to the west, and the road then climbs to the mountain village of Pefki. These places add a scenic route to the archaeological one: the road leads through olive groves, past gorges and to small coves of southern Lasithi. A footpath descends through the Pefki gorge from the village to the coast; further east, above the sea at the mouth of the Perivolakia gorge, stands the monastery of Moni Kapsa. Higher still, the 1,500-metre summit of Afentis Stavromenos looks out over the whole coast to the islands of Chrysi and Koufonisi. Makrygialos has the advantage that sea, history and hill country can be combined here in a single day.

Makrygialos today

For centuries the coast was almost deserted: for fear of pirates the inhabitants had withdrawn to mountain villages such as Agios Stefanos. Even in the middle of the 20th century there was little here beyond fishermen’s huts and farm stores. Only after 1950, when the road was built, did the present Makrygialos grow from a small fishing settlement into the principal resort of this stretch of coast; besides tourism, people live from olive oil, fruit-growing and greenhouses. The village has kept its long beach, the fishing boats and the unhurried rhythm of the southern sea, and at the same time acquired everything needed for a longer stay. Those who look more closely discover behind sand and hotels an unbroken history: the Minoan country house, the Roman villa, the seaborne trade and present-day life on the south Cretan coast.