Listed 5 sub titles with search on: Information about the place for wider area of: "MATALA Village HERAKLIO" .
MATALA (Village) HERAKLIO
Matala located 71km southwest of Iraklion via the Iraklion - Agia
Varvara - Agii Deka - Mires - Matala road is on the coast, south of the town of
Timbaki. Matala is quite a large town with a good range of tourist facilities
from which you can easily reach the archaeological sites of Festos, Agia Triada,
and Gortyn. Various other beaches of southern Crete are also nearby. Matala has
remains of Minoan, Greek, Roman and early Byzantine eras. Matala has revised its
former image of a hippie settlement and there are presently no signs of that era.
Now it has many attractive tourist facilities and a pleasant ambience. There is
a market that has a bazaar atmosphere with many shop doors opening onto the covered
street. The roads from Iraklion are good and a direct trip will take 2 hours.
From Matala, Agia Galini in the southern part of Rethimnon prefecture is easily
reached. Ierapetra although further, is an equally interesting journey. There
are frequent buses to the these destinations as well as many other local ones.
This text is cited Feb 2003 from the Crete TOURnet URL below, which contains images.
MATALON (Ancient city) HERAKLIO
Matalia (Mtalia, Ptol. iii. 17. § 4), a town in Crete near the headland of Matala(Matala,
Stadiasm.), and probably the same place as the naval arsenal of Gortyna, Metallum
(Metallon, Strab. x. p. 479), as it appears in our copies of Strabo, but incorrectly.
(Comp. Groskurd, ad loc.) The modern name in Mr. Pashley's map is Matala. (Hock,
Kreta, vol. i. pp. 399, 435 Mus. Class. Antiq. vol. ii. p. 287.)
Lies on a tiny bay 8 km N of Cape Lithinon on the Gulf of Matala.
Now a small fishing village, it was in Roman times one of the two outports or
epineia of Gortyn, the other being Lebena. In prehistoric and Classical times
it may have served as the port of Phaistos, the alternative site for the prehistoric
port being Kommos, just beyond the headland to the N. Matala is described by Strabo
as 130 stades from Gortyn and 40 stades from Phaistos (10.4.11,14); mentioned
by Ptolemy (3.15.3) as Matalia and by the Stadiasmus (323-24) as a city with a
harbor. Near Matala was the "lisse petra" where Menelaus' ships were
wrecked on his journey home from Troy (Od. 3293ff): probably Cape Nysos, the cape
between Matala and Kommos, but possibly Cape Lithinon itself.
Subject to Phaistos in the 3d c. B.C., Matala was captured in ca.
219, along with Lebena, by young Gortynian exiles at war with their elders (Polyb.
4.55.6); and when Phaistos came under the control of Gortyn in the mid 2d c. B.C.,
Matala became a second port for Gortyn.
On the N and S sides of the bay are over 100 chambers cut at several
levels in the calcareous sandstone cliffs. Many of these certainly served as tombs,
with benches and side-niches for offerings cut in the rock, and a floor level
below the entrance level. Some chambers investigated recently contained lamps
of the 1st and 2d c. A.D. On the S side of the bay some of the chambers are now
submerged, with their floors 1.8 m and their thresholds 1.5 m under water (Lembesi),
which shows that there has been a relative rise in sea level, at least partly
owing to land subsidence; Evans' estimate of a relative rise of 5 m is, however,
excessive. At the SE corner of the bay there is a deep cutting in the cliff, 5.8
m wide and at least 38 m long, with a rock-cut floor and side-chamber: a slipway,
probably covered, for a warship; probably Graeco-Roman in date, but possibly later.
The stumps of rock-cut bollards of uncertain date line the seaward edge of the
rock shelf along the S side of the bay. No other remains of harbor installations
can now be seen; in antiquity ships would have moored, as today, in the S part
of the bay, protected from the prevailing SW wind. The sandy E shore of the bay
is exposed and pounded by surf; an apparent platform in its center is a natural
formation of beach rock.
The ancient settlement lay mainly on the hill S of the bay, where
Spratt saw "vestiges of a small walled fortress, built with mortar and small
stones." An inscribed base of the 2d-3d c., of a statue of Artemis Oxychia,
was found here recently, and marble fragments, columns, and foundations, perhaps
of granaries or warehouses, in the plain at the head of the bay. The visible ancient
remains are almost entirely of the Roman period, but remains of the Classical
period may be assumed to lie beneath; tombs of the 4th c. B.C. have been found
in the vicinity. No coins of Matala are known, and very few inscriptions. There
is little trace of Bronze Age occupation at Matala, but Kommos has evidence of
occupation in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, and also in the Geometric period.
D. J. Blackman, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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