Knossos Palace in Municipality of Heraklion

You're standing at Knossos, on Kephala hill, about five kilometres south of the centre of Heraklion. This is often called the oldest city in Europe. Farmers were already living here around 7000 BC. Thousands of years later, around 1900 BC, the first palace of the Minoans rose on this hill. They are widely seen as Europe's earliest advanced civilisation. After a destruction around 1700 BC the palace was rebuilt, bigger and grander. Most of what you see today belongs to that second golden age.