HELLAS - CRETE
Crete (Greece: "Kriti") is the fifth largest Mediterranean island and is 260 km long from west to east. It is between 10 and 55 km wide. The highest hills are 2400m and in the west. The Omalos high plain is also here where there is a wonderful walk through the Samaria gorge to the sea. The earliest historical evidence of the culture on this island is in Homer's Odyssey. The people on the island were made up of Achaian, Dorian, Pelasgian, Cydonier and Etoecreter, the pre-hellenic native inhabitants. The largest town on Crete at this time was Knossos and it was also the capital of the kingdom of the legendary king of Crete Minos. | Many people ruled Crete: Rome, the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs, the Ottomans...in 1204 Crete was sold to Venice, in 1813 it fell to Egypt and only at the end of the war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire in 1913 was it ceded to Greece where it has stayed apart from the 4 year occupation by German forces from 1941-1945. |
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