The Palace of Knossos

Nature
The wow factor for nature - does it show nature at its best? Doesn't need to be the wildebeest migration or diving with hundreds of hammerheads. Rather make you pause as you realise just how awesome the natural world can be
2
Culture
How much does this experience showcase some of the better and finer things that us humans can offer? Sure, it can be ancient ruins and renaissance churches, but it can also be festivals or soaking up some of the great modern cities of the world
7
Fun factor/activity
Very simple - was it fun? This is usually linked in with doing some kind of activity - i mean, walking along some cliffs is nice, but paragliding from them, now that is fun. Its a vastly underrated factor in a truly great experience
0
Avoid the crowds
Big tour groups and being surrounded by loud fellow tourists can sap the life out of even the greatest of travel experiences. This score is to reflect just how much you can avoid this. But. . . The score also takes into account if the crowds actually add to the experience, such as with a party town or a bustling local market
2
World famous
How world famous is the experience?
3
unique
How hard is it to have a similar experience in other places round the world?
6
Overall TE Score
The overall travel experiences score:  fun factor + avoid the crowds + (best of nature or culture) + (best of world famous or unique). Then convert into a score out of 100
37 *What the scores mean and where do they come from
RANKING
How this travel experience ranks compared to all the other experiences on this site, based on the travel experience (te) score
425th/457
Bottom 10%
continent
Europe
country
Greece
Length of time
1 day or less
Typical daily price
This gives you a rough idea of the daily price based on 2 people travelling where they can split costs like accommodation. It excludes travel there and back, and factors in inflation the numbers in brackets show the price range for the full time of the experience (so not necessarily daily). It is a range to reflect different budget vs higher end
$20 (typically $10 - $30)
Time of year visited
July
Primary Tags
Click on any of the tags to see all travel experiences with the same tag
Ancient ruins Museums
All Tags
UNESCO world heritage site
Wow Factor
Two scores: first is the wow factor which ranges from ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ to ⭐️, and a separate category for the truly "gash". The second is the more analytical travel experience score, which considers 6 varied criteria to give an overall score out of 100.
⭐

Summary

The Palace of Knossos is Crete’s most famous attraction and the former capital of the Minoans, the first advanced civilization in all of Europe.  To put its age into context, the Minoan civilization started as early as 3500BC, with the more complex urban civilization around 2000BC – the oldest advanced civilization in the world was the Sumerians in 3000BC, the Pyramid of Giza was built 2500BC, the Ancient Greek Dark Ages only started in 1200BC/ 800BC, Rome was only founded in 753BC and starts to branch outside of Italy in 250BC.  Indeed – Old AF and with the added mystery that we still don’t know how they collapsed in 1450BC.

 

The problem with Knossos though is that it is very hard to contextualize this history and bring it to life.  This is not a criticism of the restoration work that has been done, it is actually very impressive, more just the broad difficulties for a site quite this old.  So, my 3 tips:

 

Tip #1 Biggest one – try and read up on the Minoans before you arrive, otherwise you run the risk of your visit feeling a bit like one of those school trips where you wander around a little bored and starting at a bunch of old stones with not that much meaning.  Instead, you want to be imaging what this place was like and how far ahead of its time it really was.

Tip #2 Get there before 10am – we noticed a clear increase in fellow tourists at 10am as the coach loads arrived and, if visiting in summer, it avoids the energy sapping heat of the day.

Tip #3 Take full advantage of the rest of Crete – the real wow highlights are to the west.  In particular Staying in Chania Old Town and Hiking the Samaria Gorge.  In my first trip, I did what most do – fly into Iraklion, sit in a hotel by the pool, visit Knossos and have a few nice meals.  Pleasant, but not exactly a wow experience.

Highlights

P5074913-aspect-ratio-900-675

#1 Getting the chance to wander through this ground-breaking site and try to understand just how ahead of its time it was

knossos-Palace-aspect-ratio-900-675

#2 The views over the site and the valley around

960-aspect-ratio-900-675

#3 Piecing together what Knossos might have looked like at its height

521e608d743c6c508274b762a24432b7ae3d40b5-aspect-ratio-900-675

#4 Getting a brief glimpse into what it must have been like in day-to-day life at the site

Experiences nearby

Wow Factor Score Two scores: first is the wow factor which ranges from ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ to ⭐️, and a separate category for the truly "gash". The second is the more analytical travel experience score, which considers 6 varied criteria to give an overall score out of 100. LowHigh
  • Elite, unmissable
  • World-class, downsides
  • Meets the Wow Factor
  • Worth it
  • Meh
  • Gash

Other Ancient Ruin Experiences

Seeing the Pyramids of Teotihuacan

Machu Picchu

Cycling Angkor Wat

Exploring Petra in winter

Three days in Rome

Cycling around the Temples of Bagan

Walking the wild Great Wall of China by Jinshanling

Stepping back in time in Malta

Driving through the Sacred Valley

Hiking Hadrian’s Wall

Mayan ruins of Tikal

The Terracotta Warriors in Xian

Helicopter trip to El Mirador in the heart of the Guatemalan jungle

The Pyramids of Giza

Score Detail

The scores above are the real point of this site.

Over 20+ years and 100+ countries, I’ve tried to rank the world’s best travel experiences - from genuinely mind-blowing ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to the properly gash.

Every one of the 500+ places on this site has both a Wow Factor rating and a more analytical Travel Experience (TE) score based on the things that actually make travel memorable.

If you're curious about the thinking behind it, head to the About page.

Otherwise, explore the map above or on the Home page and see which places truly deliver maximum wow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get the Wow Before Everyone Else

Join the newsletter for new travel experiences, fresh rankings, personal notes, and stories from the archive — sent only when there’s something worth sharing.