Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Theatral Area
Royal Road
PALACE OF KNOSSOS
N
North Entrance
Lustral Basin
Bull Relief
West Court
Giant "Pithoi"
Storage Pits
Throne Room
Piano
Nobile
Site Entrance
Workshops
Central Court
Statue
7
West Entrance
Grand
Stairway
Royal Apartments
Priest-King
Fresco
South House
0
25
Southeast House
metres
for a while, catching the patter and then backtracking to absorb the detail when the
crowd has moved on. You won't get the place to yourself, whenever you come, but
exploring on your own does give you the opportunity to appreciate individual parts of
the palace in the brief lulls between groups.
For some idea of the size and complexity of the palace in its original state, take a look at
the cutaway drawings (wholly imaginary but probably not too far off) on sale outside.
Royal Apartments
he superb
Royal Apartments
around the central staircase are not guesswork, and they
are plainly the finest of the rooms at Knossos. The
Grand Stairway
itself is a masterpiece
of design, its large well bringing light into the lower storeys.
In the
Queen's Suite
, of the grand
Hall of the Colonnades
at the bottom of the staircase,
the main living room is decorated with the celebrated
dolphin fresco
- it's a
reproduction; the original is now in the Iráklion Archeological Museum (see p.452) - and
with running friezes of flowers and abstract spirals. Remember, though, that all this is
speculation; the dolphin fresco, for example, was found on the courtyard floor, not in the
room itself, and would have been viewed from an upper balcony as a sort of trompe l'oeil,
like looking through a glass-bottomed boat. A dark passage leads around to the queen's
bathroom
and a clay tub, the famous “flushing” toilet (a hole in the ground with drains
to take the waste away - it was flushed by throwing a bucket of water down).
he much-perused
drainage system
was a series of interconnecting terracotta pipes
running underneath most of the palace. Guides to the site never fail to point these out
as evidence of the advanced state of Minoan civilization.
