Art And Culture in Heraklion

The cultural account of Heraklion begins not with the Greeks but with the Minoans: the civilisation that grew here some four thousand years ago is reckoned the first in Europe. It left palaces with running water, frescoes of dolphins and two scripts — Linear A, still unread, and Linear B, deciphered only in 1952 and found to be early Greek. All of it sits in the city's Archaeological Museum, while Knossos five kilometres away gives it volume in stone.

The second layer is Christian and Venetian. In Candia, as the Venetians called the town, the Cretan school of icon painting took shape, and from here came Domenikos Theotokopoulos, whom Spain knows as El Greco. The third layer is alive: the potter's wheel, the loom, tastings of olive oil and raki in village workshops on the road to the Lassithi plateau, where windmills were still pumping water last century.

Tours usually tie these layers into a single day: Knossos with the museum, or Lassithi with the cave of Zeus, the mythology park and an olive mill. Practical notes: the museum is cool and has benches, Knossos has neither. The workshops work on weekdays and some close on Sunday. A guide is no luxury here: without explanation Minoan pottery stays a case full of pots.