Some 3 Kms east of the resort of the same name, Malia, with an area of 7,500 sq metres, is Crete’s third largest ‘palace’, and great for wandering around. Far less visited than Knossos or Phaistos, one can really get a feel for what it might have been like in Minoan times.
The French School of Archaeology, whose responsibility it has been to excavate and maintain this site, have done a truly superb job, perhaps learning from the mistakes of Arthur Evans at the Palace of Knossos. Not only is there a “palace” here, but also a town, known as ‘Quartier Mu’. Worth looking out for is the ‘Kernos’; a large circular stone, with 33 small holes, and one larger one around its perimeter, and a large hole, at its centre. Similar to many far smaller ones found elsewhere, including Phaistos, it believed to have been used for religious purposes, as offerings of seeds, etc to the gods, but looks to your reporter to be an early example of a measuring device where there would have been weights on the outide and a scale at its centre.