Knossos

Certain · excavated palace, Crete

The Bronze Age palace of the Minoan sea-kings, its labyrinthine ground-plan the likely seed of the Minotaur’s maze. Homer calls Minos the “nine-year king, confidant of great Zeus” — and Plato’s Laws opens on the road from Knossos to the cave of Zeus, three old men retracing Minos’s walk to discuss what law is. Odysseus’s false tales make him a Cretan of this very city.