Crete: Gortyn, Arkadi Monastery, Eluetherna Museum

There is evidence for human occupation of the ancient city of Gortyn beginning in the Neolithic era (7000 BC). It was one of the oldest and strongest cities on Crete during the prehistoric and historic periods believing to have had a population of 300,000 people. This site is famous for the Gortyn Law Code there. Bob gave his report on this code. In addition to the famous inscription at the site, you can also see the Roman Odeum and an early Byzantine church. With special permission, we were able to see more of the site, but we had to walk along the road to another area where the guard did not open the gate but instead took us to a place where the fence was partially down and had us climb over it (I wonder if that's the usual practice?). Here there were some temples and other excavated monuments.

Odeum

The laws.

Bob giving his presentation about the law code behind him.

Basilica.

The special permission excavations part of Gortyn.

This was a fountain.

Temple of the Egyptian gods.

The Arkadi Monastery played a special role in the Cretan resistance against the Ottoman rule in 1866. Close to 1000 Greeks sought refuge in this monastery during the revolt with a majority being women and children. When the monastery came under attack. The women and children hid in the gunpowder room. When the Turks made it into the room after killing the armed men trying to defend the monastery, the people in the gunpowder room blew it up and sacrificed themselves to kill the Turks. Just outside the monastery is a memorial commemorating the sacrifices of the dead.

Part of the memorial.

 

Memorial structure.

The monastery.

The church inside the gates.

A bullet stuck in a tree from the 1866 revolt.

The gunpowder room. There is a cardboard picture of women and children at the end.

This little pupper was hanging out in there.

The last place we stopped was Eluetherna, which has a museum and Necropolis. We were not allowed to take pictures in the museum. It was small but well put together and had some interesting finds. They did not let us go to the Necropolis site because they said it was closed even though we had scheduled a tour of the site. I had heard last year's tour was almost 3 hours, so I was actually a bit relieved to not have been able to go.

A picture of the outside of the museum since we couldn't take any pictures inside.