Theatre Steps of Phaistos

Cut into the hillside at Phaistos, these broad stone steps survive from one of the great Minoan palace sites of Bronze Age Crete, a city whose ancient name echoes in the Linear B tablet word pa-i-to. The theatral area served as a gathering place for ceremonies and communal events, and its use spans an extraordinary arc of time, from the second millennium BCE through Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Late Antique periods. Excavation here ran from 1978 to 2011, and ongoing survey work continues to reveal the city and its surrounding territory.