Knossos Palace History: Minoans, King Minos and What Survives

Who were the Minoans?

Minoan is the modern name for the Bronze Age civilisation of Crete — it is an archaeological label, not a name the people themselves are known to have used. Arthur Evans popularised the term after the legendary King Minos. Minoan civilisation is associated with palaces, frescoes, maritime trade, complex administration, sophisticated craft production, religious symbolism, early writing systems and large-scale storage. Knossos became the best-known Minoan site partly because of its archaeological importance and partly because of the sheer scale of Evans’s excavation and reconstruction; other major palatial centres on Crete include Phaistos, Malia and Zakros, but Knossos was the largest of them all.

When was Knossos Palace built?

The palace developed across two broad phases that the official Greek archaeological description distinguishes as the first and second palaces. As a simplified chronology, the first palace period runs roughly from the 19th to the 17th centuries BC, and the second palace period from the 17th to the 14th centuries BC. Most of the surviving complex belongs to the later phases, though earlier material and later alterations are folded into it — the Ministry of Culture dates the main palace broadly to about 2000–1350 BC, a wide range that reflects a building repeatedly rebuilt rather than constructed once and frozen in time.

The first palace

Around the start of the second millennium BC, Knossos developed the kind of monumental complex archaeologists call a palace — though the word can mislead if it conjures a European royal residence. A Minoan palace combined administration, storage, production, ceremony, religion, feasting and elite residence under one roof, apparently organised on a monumental scale from the start. It was later destroyed, probably by earthquake activity and wider regional disruption, around the 18th or 17th century BC. Rather than abandon the site, its inhabitants rebuilt.

The second palace

The rebuilt palace is the extraordinary complex most visitors associate with Knossos today, organised around a large Central Court with four main wings holding royal or elite quarters, workshops, shrines, storerooms, repositories, ceremonial halls, the Throne Room, banquet spaces and staircases connecting multiple floors. This was not a simple single-storey building — it rose across several levels, and that vertical complexity is one reason modern visitors sometimes find the surviving remains hard to visualise as a coherent building.

How big was Knossos Palace?

The palace covered roughly 22,000 square metres at its developed extent and contained hundreds of spaces, though not all were equivalent rooms and reconstructing the exact original count is difficult. What is clear is that the combination of corridors, courts, storage chambers, staircases, light wells and upper floors made it enormous by Bronze Age standards — and helps explain why later generations connected Knossos with the idea of a Labyrinth. That does not prove the palace was the literal mythical maze; it only shows that the architectural complexity behind the story was real. We separate what the myth claims from what the excavation can actually show in the Knossos Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

The Central Court

Rather than picture the palace as a maze of random rooms, think of it as a complex organised around one large open space. The Central Court probably had ceremonial and social importance, although archaeologists still debate the precise functions carried out around it, and for visitors it is the best orientation point on site — once you know where the court sits, the rest of the layout becomes far easier to read.

The West Wing

The western side of the palace held some of the most important ceremonial, religious and storage areas, including the storage magazines, large pithoi, repositories, ritual spaces and the Throne Room complex. The West Magazines in particular show the economic role of the palace: rows of storage chambers built to hold large quantities of goods.

What were the giant pithoi used for?

The enormous ceramic jars visitors photograph at Knossos are called pithoi, and they were used to store commodities — likely grain, oil, wine and other agricultural products. Their scale tells you something fundamental about what the palace actually did: Knossos collected, stored and redistributed resources, which is why it makes more sense as an administrative and economic centre than simply the residence of a king.

The Throne Room

The Throne Room is one of the most famous spaces at Knossos, built around a stone seat set against the wall. Its exact purpose remains debated — Arthur Evans read it in royal terms, and that reading strongly shaped the modern name, while other interpretations emphasise a ritual or religious function instead. This is a recurring pattern at Knossos: many of the familiar room names were coined by the excavators and reflect interpretation rather than an ancient inscription telling us what a space was actually called, so treat labels like “Throne Room” as useful conventions rather than proven ancient facts.

The East Wing

The eastern side of Knossos is where the palace’s vertical architecture is easiest to appreciate, with monumental staircases, light wells and rooms arranged across several levels connected by complex circulation routes. The Grand Staircase gives the strongest surviving impression of how sophisticated the original building must have been — modern visitors see ruins at ground level, but a Bronze Age visitor would have moved through walls, upper floors, painted surfaces, doors, columns, staircases and changing light, which was a fundamentally different architectural experience from the one you have today.

Minoan columns

Knossos is famous for its reconstructed red columns, and Minoan columns are visually distinctive because they typically appear wider at the top than at the bottom — the reverse of the proportions familiar from later Greek architecture. The columns visitors photograph today are reconstructions rather than untouched Bronze Age originals: the real columns were made largely of timber, and Arthur Evans rebuilt them in his effort to make the palace legible and to protect what had been excavated.

Frescoes at Knossos

Knossos was richly decorated with frescoes showing human figures, animals, plants, processions, ceremonial scenes and bull imagery. Many of the images most people associate with Knossos survive only as fragments, reconstructed by archaeologists and artists working from what remained, and the important original material now sits in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum rather than on the palace walls. Anyone particularly interested in Minoan art should visit both the site and the museum — the palace gives you the architecture, the museum gives you most of the surviving visual culture, and our Knossos and Heraklion museum guide covers how to fit both into a single day.

The Bull-Leaping Fresco

The Bull-Leaping Fresco is one of the most recognisable images of Minoan Crete, showing human figures interacting dramatically with a bull. It is usually interpreted as some form of bull-leaping, but whether the scene records a literal athletic activity, a ritual, or an idealised symbolic performance remains debated. What is clear is that bull imagery mattered enormously in Minoan visual culture, which gives real archaeological context to the later Greek myth of the Minotaur.

The Snake Goddesses

The famous faience figurines known as the Snake Goddesses were found at Knossos in the Temple Repositories and date to roughly 1600–1500 BC. The Heraklion Archaeological Museum interprets them as female figures associated with ritual, possibly goddesses or priestesses, shown in elaborate dress and holding or otherwise associated with snakes. They are among the most iconic surviving symbols of Minoan religion, and — like the frescoes — the originals are in the museum, not at the site.

Writing at Knossos

Knossos also matters for the history of writing in the Aegean. Bronze Age Crete used several writing systems, including Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and, later, Linear B.

Linear A

Linear A was used by the Minoans themselves and remains undeciphered. Scholars can identify signs and recurring patterns, but nobody can confidently read the underlying language, which is one reason our understanding of Minoan society and religion stays incomplete.

Linear B

Linear B was used later to write an early form of Greek, and tablets from Knossos provide evidence for administrative activity during the Mycenaean phase of the site. The official archaeological record notes that 14th-century-BC Linear B tablets from Knossos record the place name as ko-no-so — one of the most direct ancient textual links to the site.

What happened around 1450 BC?

Around 1450 BC, many Minoan centres across Crete were destroyed or badly disrupted, for reasons that are still debated: some combination of warfare, political upheaval, earthquakes and wider economic change is usually proposed. Knossos appears to have come through this differently from several other palatial centres, and afterward the site came under Mycenaean influence or control from mainland Greece — one of the biggest political transitions in its history.

The Mycenaean phase

The Mycenaeans were the Bronze Age Greek-speaking civilisation associated with mainland centres such as Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and Thebes. At Knossos, the appearance of Linear B — which records an early form of Greek — is the clearest sign of the changed administrative environment, and the palace kept functioning for a period after the destructions that hit other Cretan centres. Eventually the palatial system at Knossos ended too, though the precise chronology of that final destruction and administration is still debated among scholars. The point worth keeping for a visit is that Knossos did not simply vanish in one catastrophe — its political and cultural role changed gradually over time.

Was the Thera eruption responsible for the destruction of Knossos?

This comes up often. The volcanic eruption of Thera (Santorini) was one of the largest natural disasters in the Bronze Age Mediterranean and certainly affected the wider Aegean world, but it is too simple to say “Santorini erupted and destroyed Knossos.” The chronology does not line up that neatly — the major destructions across Cretan palatial centres around 1450 BC happened later than the eruption. Thera may have contributed to wider instability or economic damage, but it does not offer a single-event explanation for the end of Minoan palatial civilisation.

Did an earthquake destroy Knossos?

Earthquakes affected Crete repeatedly and likely damaged Knossos at more than one stage — the first palace’s destruction is associated with seismic activity — but the site’s history also includes rebuilding, later destruction, political change, Mycenaean occupation and continued settlement. There is no single earthquake that neatly explains the whole story.

What happened after the palace period?

Knossos kept existing long after the Bronze Age palace system ended, which matters because tourist narratives often stop as soon as “the Minoans disappear.” The settlement stayed significant through later Greek periods and, during the Hellenistic period, flourished again as an important Cretan city — archaeological remains from these later phases include sanctuaries, tombs, defensive structures and urban remains, so the site belongs to a much longer story than Minoan archaeology alone.

Roman Knossos

Rome conquered Crete in the 1st century BC, and the Ministry of Culture records that Knossos was taken in 67 BC by Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus. The area continued to be inhabited under Roman rule, and one important monument from this period is the Villa of Dionysos, known for its mosaics. Most visitors focus almost entirely on the Minoan palace, but Roman Knossos is part of the same, much longer occupation history.

When was Knossos rediscovered?

The archaeological rediscovery of Knossos did not begin with Arthur Evans. An important early figure was Minos Kalokairinos, a Cretan antiquarian and merchant who, in 1878, excavated part of the western side of the palace, exposing important remains and demonstrating the site’s significance decades before Evans arrived. Saying simply “Arthur Evans discovered Knossos” is therefore not accurate — Evans carried out the excavation that made Knossos internationally famous, but Kalokairinos had already dug there first.

Minos Kalokairinos

Kalokairinos is one of the most important figures in the modern history of Knossos. His excavations uncovered part of the West Wing, including storage areas, and he recognised early on that the site was exceptionally important. Political conditions under Ottoman rule, along with concerns about archaeological finds leaving Crete, complicated any further excavation at the time — and for anyone interested in the history of archaeology rather than only the Bronze Age, Kalokairinos deserves more credit than simplified accounts usually give him.

Heinrich Schliemann and Knossos

Heinrich Schliemann, famous for excavating Troy and Mycenae, was also interested in Knossos and attempted to acquire the site, though he never excavated it on the scale Evans later achieved. The Greek archaeological record notes that various foreign researchers showed interest before systematic excavation began, and the key obstacle for most of them was partly the difficulty of acquiring the land.

Arthur Evans arrives

Arthur Evans, a British archaeologist and then curator of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, acquired the necessary land after political changes on Crete made archaeological work easier, and began systematic excavation in 1900. The discoveries were spectacular: within a relatively short period, Evans and his team exposed major sections of the palace, and excavation and study continued, with interruptions, until 1931. His work is what transformed Knossos into one of the world’s best-known archaeological sites.

What did Arthur Evans find?

Evans exposed or investigated the main palace, surrounding buildings, sections of the Minoan town, cemeteries, fresco fragments, tablets, storage areas, ritual objects and other architectural remains, and went on to build an extensive chronological system for Minoan Crete. His publications shaped the study of the civilisation for generations afterward.

Why did Evans call the civilisation “Minoan”?

Evans connected the civilisation he was uncovering with the later Greek traditions surrounding King Minos, and named it Minoan civilisation accordingly. The term became standard — but that does not mean archaeologists proved King Minos ruled the palace exactly as mythology describes. It means a legendary figure supplied the modern scholarly name for a real Bronze Age civilisation, which is a different claim entirely. We go into the Minos and Minotaur story on its own terms in the Knossos Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

Why is Knossos reconstructed?

Knossos looks different from most archaeological sites because Evans reconstructed large parts of it, using materials including reinforced concrete, with several goals in mind: stabilising fragile remains, protecting exposed architecture, helping visitors visualise the palace, and presenting his own interpretation of the building. Some of these interventions were innovative for their time; others are now considered controversial.

Why are the reconstructions controversial?

The core issue is that reconstruction can blur the line between what archaeologists actually found and what they believed the original building looked like. Evans had to interpret fragmentary evidence, and he and the artists working with him reconstructed columns, walls, rooms and fresco compositions — some of those interpretations remain plausible, others are debated, and modern archaeology generally takes a far more conservative approach to reconstruction at original sites than Evans did a century ago. If you want to know exactly what this means for what you are looking at on the ground, what to expect at Knossos Palace walks through the site stop by stop.

Is everything at Knossos original?

No. Visitors should distinguish between several categories of what they are actually seeing.

Original ancient remains

Stone walls, foundations, architectural elements and excavated features.

Ancient material restored or repositioned

Elements conserved as part of the site’s preservation work.

Evans-era reconstruction

Concrete, reconstructed columns, walls and architectural interpretations.

Reconstructed fresco imagery

Modern compositions based partly on surviving ancient fragments.

None of this makes Knossos “fake.” It makes the site a monument to both Minoan civilisation and the history of early-20th-century archaeology at the same time.

What is actually ancient at Knossos?

A great deal. The palace foundations, walls, storage facilities, architectural layout and numerous structural remains are genuinely ancient — the underlying archaeological site is not a modern creation. What visitors need to understand is that some of the most visually striking parts, especially the brightly painted reconstructed architecture, are modern interventions built on top of archaeological interpretation rather than surviving Bronze Age fabric.

Why visit Knossos if some parts are reconstructed?

Because reconstruction is only one part of the site. Knossos remains one of the most important places anywhere for understanding Bronze Age Crete, and you can still experience the scale of the palace, the Central Court, the magazines, the pithoi, the complex floor plan, the staircases, the ritual areas and the genuinely excavated architectural remains. Viewed critically, the reconstructions themselves become useful too — they force you to think about how archaeology turns fragments into interpretation, which is arguably as interesting as the ruins themselves.

Knossos and King Minos

Greek tradition identifies Knossos as the palace of King Minos, a figure central to the myths of the Minotaur, the Labyrinth, Theseus, Ariadne, Daedalus and Icarus. Archaeology confirms that Knossos was a major Bronze Age centre; it does not prove the life of a single historical ruler matching every detail of the myths. The sensible way to think about Minos is as part of the later cultural memory of Bronze Age Crete rather than a documented king.

Knossos and the Labyrinth

The palace’s extraordinary complexity — its corridors, courts, staircases, rooms, magazines and light wells — makes the later Labyrinth association easy to understand. Archaeologists have not, however, discovered a literal maze built to contain a Minotaur. The Labyrinth belongs to mythology; the palace belongs to archaeology; and the genuinely fascinating question is how the memory of one may have shaped the other, which is the whole subject of our separate guide to the Knossos Labyrinth and the Minotaur.

What can visitors see today?

The important areas include the West Court, the West Magazines and their giant pithoi, the Central Court, the Throne Room, the Grand Staircase, the eastern residential areas, the reconstructed columned sections, and various ritual and administrative spaces. The exact visitor route can change over time because an active archaeological site requires ongoing conservation work and crowd management.

Why the Heraklion Archaeological Museum matters

A Knossos visit is incomplete if you expect to see all the famous original objects at the palace itself. Most of the major finds — the frescoes, the faience Snake Goddess figurines, the Phaistos Disc and the Bull-Leaping panel — are preserved at the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, which helps you understand the palace’s decoration, religion, writing, craftsmanship, trade and everyday life in a way the ruins alone cannot. Anyone strongly interested in the history should budget time for both, and our Knossos and Heraklion museum guide covers how to combine them in a single day, including current admission for each.

A good historical order for visiting Knossos

If you want to understand the site rather than simply photograph it, this mental sequence helps keep the layered history straight as you walk:

1. Neolithic settlement — remember people lived here long before the palace.
2. First Palace — think about the emergence of large-scale administration.
3. Second Palace — this is the monumental Minoan world most visitors have come to see.
4. Destruction and Mycenaean phase — Knossos continued after the peak of Minoan palace culture.
5. Later city — the site survived into Greek and Roman times.
6. Excavation — ask what Kalokairinos and Evans each uncovered.
7. Reconstruction — separate ancient remains from modern interpretation.

That framework makes a self-guided visit considerably easier to follow.

Common myths about Knossos history

“Arthur Evans discovered Knossos.” Not exactly — Minos Kalokairinos excavated part of the site in 1878, and Evans undertook the major systematic excavations beginning in 1900.

“The palace was built all at once.” No. Knossos developed through multiple construction phases and rebuilding episodes across centuries.

“Santorini’s eruption immediately destroyed Knossos.” Too simplistic — the chronology of Minoan decline and destruction is considerably more complicated than a single eruption.

“Everything you see is 3,500 years old.” No — some of the most visible architectural elements are Evans-era reconstructions dating from the early 20th century.

“King Minos is historically proven.” No. He belongs primarily to mythology and later Greek tradition, not to a securely documented historical record.

“The Minotaur’s Labyrinth has been excavated.” No literal mythical Labyrinth has been identified archaeologically anywhere at the site.

How old is Knossos?

That depends what you mean. The settlement is more than 8,000 years old in terms of human occupation. The famous palace is roughly 4,000 years old, with major construction beginning around 2000 BC. The reconstructed sections are mostly around a century old, dating from the period of Arthur Evans’s excavation and restoration. Asking “how old is Knossos?” genuinely has more than one correct answer, depending on which Knossos you mean.

Who built Knossos Palace?

The palace was built by the Bronze Age inhabitants of Crete whom modern archaeologists call the Minoans — not the work of one ruler or one construction project, but of generations who built, rebuilt and modified the complex over time. The mythological tradition says King Minos ruled here and Daedalus built the Labyrinth; that is a story about the palace’s legendary meaning, not archaeological evidence about who physically constructed it.

Why was Knossos abandoned?

It wasn’t, in one simple moment. The palace system ended in the Late Bronze Age, but occupation in the broader area continued, and later Greek and Roman communities used Knossos for centuries afterward. The honest word for what happened is transformation, not disappearance.

Is Knossos the oldest city in Europe?

You will encounter this claim, and it depends heavily on how terms like “city,” “continuous occupation” and “Europe” are defined. What can safely be said is that Knossos contains one of Europe’s earliest major permanent settlement sequences and was an exceptionally important prehistoric urban centre — treat the flat superlative as promotional shorthand rather than a precise archaeological definition.

Is Knossos a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Yes. In July 2025 the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the Minoan Palatial Centres of Crete — Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zakros, Zominthos and Kydonia — on the World Heritage List as a single serial property. Knossos had sat on Greece’s UNESCO Tentative List for years before that, so it’s worth checking the current listing if you’re reading an older source that still describes it that way — but the archaeological importance of Knossos never depended on the label either way.

How long do you need to understand the history?

A basic visit takes around 1.5–2 hours. If history is your main interest, allow closer to 2.5–3 hours, or consider a guided tour that can compress the layered chronology into a coherent story as you walk rather than leaving you to reconstruct it from a plan afterward. Knossos is not difficult because there is too much walking — it is difficult because you are asked to reconstruct an enormous vanished building from fragmentary remains. Our guide to how long you need at Knossos Palace breaks down what one, two or three hours actually covers, and current admission is set out in our Knossos tickets and prices guide.

Is a guided tour worth it for history?

Often, yes — Knossos is one of the archaeological sites where a guide can make a genuinely large difference, because a good one can explain the chronology, the palace’s functions, Minoan society, the religious interpretations, the reconstruction, the myth-versus-archaeology distinction, the Mycenaean takeover and the excavation history all as you walk, rather than leaving you to piece it together from information boards that barely exist. Without context, some visitors see disconnected walls; with it, the same ruins become far easier to imagine as a functioning palace. The private Knossos tour with a licensed archaeologist is built specifically for this kind of depth, with the €20 admission included and the pace set by your own questions rather than a group’s, and the skip-the-line guided walking tour covers the same chronology in a smaller time window and at a fraction of the price. Our honest answer on whether a guided tour of Knossos is worth it weighs the cost against exploring on your own. If you would rather pair the history with the objects the excavation actually produced, the Archaeological Museum and Knossos Palace half-day guided tour does both in one booking, though it is a newer listing with only around 20 reviews so far.

Frequently asked questions

When was Knossos Palace built?

The first major palace developed around 2000 BC, and the complex was substantially rebuilt around the 17th century BC. The main palatial phases span roughly 2000–1350 BC.

Who built Knossos Palace?

The Bronze Age inhabitants of Crete whom modern archaeologists call the Minoans.

How old is Knossos?

Human settlement began in the Neolithic period, around the start of the 7th millennium BC. The famous Minoan palace is roughly 4,000 years old.

Who discovered Knossos?

Minos Kalokairinos excavated part of Knossos in 1878. Arthur Evans began the major systematic excavations in 1900.

Did Arthur Evans discover Knossos?

He did not discover it first, but his excavations exposed the palace on a huge scale and made the site internationally famous.

When did Arthur Evans excavate Knossos?

Systematic excavation began in 1900 and continued, with interruptions, until 1931.

Why is Knossos called Minoan?

Arthur Evans named the civilisation after the legendary King Minos.

Was King Minos real?

He is a figure of Greek mythology and ancient tradition. No securely documented historical ruler has been proven to correspond exactly to the legendary Minos.

Was Knossos destroyed by an earthquake?

Earthquakes affected the site and probably contributed to major destruction phases, but the history cannot be reduced to a single earthquake.

Was Knossos destroyed by the Santorini eruption?

Not directly in the simple way often claimed. The eruption affected the Aegean, but the later destructions of Cretan palatial centres occurred within a more complicated chronology.

What happened to Knossos after the Minoans?

The site came under Mycenaean influence, continued beyond the Bronze Age, and later developed as an important Greek and Roman city.

Is the Throne Room really a king’s throne room?

That is the traditional name derived from excavation-era interpretation. The exact ancient function remains debated, and ritual interpretations are also taken seriously.

Are the red columns original?

No. The visible red columns are reconstructions — the original Minoan columns would have been wooden.

Are the frescoes at Knossos original?

Some displays at the site incorporate reconstructions based on ancient fragments. The major original material is preserved in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum.

Is Knossos mostly reconstructed?

No. The foundations, walls, layout, magazines and many structures are ancient. Evans reconstructed several visually prominent sections, so it’s worth distinguishing ancient remains from modern restoration as you walk rather than assuming either extreme.

Knossos history in one sentence

Knossos grew from one of Crete’s earliest permanent settlements into the largest Minoan palace centre, survived destruction and a Mycenaean takeover, continued into Greek and Roman times, and was turned into a modern archaeological icon by excavation and controversial reconstruction in the early 20th century.

Final thoughts

Knossos gets more interesting once you stop looking for one single historical moment to define it. It is not just the palace of the Minotaur, not just a Minoan ruin, and not just Arthur Evans’s reconstruction — it is all of those histories layered on top of each other. People lived on the hill in the Neolithic period. Minoan builders raised an enormous palatial centre. Administrators stored goods and kept records. Artists decorated rooms with vivid imagery. Mycenaean authorities later used the site. Greek and Roman Knossos continued long after the palace age ended. Then modern archaeologists uncovered the ruins and added another chapter through excavation, interpretation and reconstruction.

That layered history is exactly why Knossos rewards more than a quick photograph of the red columns. Keep asking, as you walk: what is ancient, what is reconstructed, what is myth, and what can archaeology actually tell us? Once you do, Knossos stops being simply Crete’s most famous archaeological site and becomes a case study in how ancient places survive, disappear, get rediscovered, and are continually reinterpreted.

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Related reading:

• The Knossos Labyrinth and the Minotaur
• Knossos and the Heraklion Archaeological Museum
• What to expect at Knossos Palace
• Is a guided tour of Knossos worth it?
• Knossos Palace tickets and prices