Eleutherna/Eleftherna

As Randall would say, you probably only know about Eleftherna because of the outbreak of the Lydian War. And even then, he didn't know that until well-after we visited the site. He went because I told him where to drive and this site had a full square on the map. A level 5 site. We were going. I didn't matter what was there or why. And as the last such level 5 within easy reach on our last day in Crete, this seemed the obvious place to go. So, with the car packed with our luggage (we had to check out of our Airbnb by 11:00am, but our ferry wouldn't depart until 9:00pm), we drove 80 min west and into the foothills of Mt. Ida. As this was the only site we intended to explore this day, we agreed to a late-ish start, and arrived around noon.

We parked very close to the acropolis, just outside a taverna, which is an important detail for later. The signs were prominent, if fades (and I got a better one at the very end, which I will share). The path was easy, and the first monument, prominent.


And I'll spoil part of the surprise, but posting the "good site map" now.

View from the acropolis. This is also important.

So, you can see we knew there were a lot of things to see on this site, many of which were at this elevation. Not all of them were Greek, and we quickly sorted churches and Byzantine ruins from the list, and proceeded.

Around Pyrgi-Akropolis, the trail diverged, and we had to scout dead ends from the intended path. There were more signs to guide us, but that left us with questions and choices. We are not sure we made the correct choice, but this is what we did.

Well, was there really a choice? Left takes you to all the sites as well as a modern village. Right only takes you to a modern village. So, theoretically, if you went left, you would eventually get to the modern village anyway. This is also important.
NOTE: no distances are listed, nor the name of the modern village. Modern Elefterna is about 1km south of the archaeological site, and more importantly, not where we parked the car!

The path.

 

More signs.
More path

Another amazing view.
And another amazing view, plus what's that down there that we need to explore?!?


We thought these were the cisterns, but that was not correct. Or maybe these are another era of cistern. Whatever, these aren't located at #13 on the map relative to where we were at this point which was past St. Anna's church, but moving on.

More signs. We have at this point committed to going to "the other Pyrgi-Akropolis", even though Pirgi-Akropolis seems to have been a site that we have already passed.  As well, the square in Mythological Atlas of Greece indicated the monuments we wanted to see were still further north.

Perseverance ultimately led us to an amazing discovery, and one that was still actively being excavated, although there was no activity this day and the gates seemed only designed to deter wandering goats.





And another sign.

And another path, however, this one was leading down. This caused us come concern because we didn't know exactly where this was going to lead or end, and it would keep going down in several switchbacks and stairs for quite a distance.

After about an hour of hiking, we got some confirmation of our direction with another sign.  However, the sign was not encouraging, and after some discussion about whether to proceed further into the valley or concede our progress and retrace our path, I revisited the earlier photos of the signs and confirmed that both directions allegedly led to the modern village, so if we kept going, we would allegedly get back to civilization. We elected to continue heading to the Nekropolis.

The backside of the Nekropolis. Now, remember that photo with the structure that was in the valley of the acropolis? This is it. We have fully descended INTO the valley.
NOTE: we knew there was a road that would also take us to the Nekropolis, but we did elect to hike to it from this direction, which would turn out to be prudent as we would later get confirmation that the Nekropolis was temporarily closed (whether it was too early in the season, or the redesigned site had not officially opened, we will never know, but this is part of the new structure for covering and displaying with walkways that we had seen at Malia).  There was also a separate stairway which would have taken us closer to the structure, although not the ruins.  We elected to skip that.

The path that we were directed to follow, now going up.

And up, with some other signs, just to confuse us. I was tracking our location on Google maps, trying to keep the Pyrgi-Akropolis/Tower in relative direction so we knew how far from the car we had strayed.

And up.

And finally, after another 45 minutes of hiking, a sign confirming the continued existence of the modern village.

Pigaidaki, which means "well". Looks like a spring to me, and Randall can attest that the water still flows abundantly in the area. 
NOTE: at this point, Pyrgi-Akropolis/Tower is almost directly above us, probably by about 50 m.

The emergence of a better path instilled me with hope, plus the fact that we were now coming to locations which were on the earliest signs. If only we had gone to the right?

  More path.

Ancient cisterns.

  And finally, we re-emerged on the Akropolis.

  We just had to cross this road, another few stairs and an incline, and the car was around the corner.  We had agreed that we would get something to drink at the taverna to celebrate, except the taverna was closed, and all we could do then was drink warn bottled water and blast the AC in the car.

Now, you would think that our journey would be over.  Not so!  Remember the map?  This is a "scavenger hunt" site, and there are other places listed in Eleftherna which have archaeological significance.  So, the next place we thought we would visit would be the Nekropolis, from the front, and as the Museum of Ancient Eleutherna aka Eleutherna Archaological Museum was on the way, we would stop there.  

Most of the significant archaeological artifacts recovered from any site have been whisked away to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, just like Athens did with all the artifacts discovered on the mainland.  But somehow, Eleftherna got to keep theirs, I think largely by portraying their museum focus as completely on that time between 1300 and 350 BCE--the Greek "Dark Ages".  It was an interesting spin, especially since they confirmed that the Nekropolis was closed, but they did have an interesting presentation about the rituals of the dead, and one of the 4 priestesses who had been buried there.  

NOTE:  Randall wants me to include that the site was originally excavated by Hunfry Payne, the brother of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a famed astronomer.  

By the time we finished touring the three rooms of the museum, it was about 4:00pm.  We decided to drive to the Ancient Bridge, the hydromill and the quarry, except Google maps has a flexible definition of what is a road.  After many extensive trips to Greece in the past and during this trip so far, we were reasonably comfortable with a level of dirt road, but our car did not have 4-wheel drive, and some of those "roads" can been pretty steep.  Randall was able to get up one but gunning the accelerator, and gamely trying to steer despite the lack of traction.  As we didn't know the condition of the road around the next bend, we elected to do a 7-point turnaround, and retreat..  We knew we would need to return to see the Nekropolis, and at that time we can collect the other sites on the list.  

Instead, we found a taverna in some village on our way back to Heraklion, met a couple more cats, and called in a day.