Museum of Ancient Eleutherna

The Museum of Ancient Eleutherna displays artifacts from the ancient city of Eleutherna, covering periods from 3000 BC to 1300 AD, including items from the Homeric era.

Planning your visit

Eleutherna matters because of what came out of the ground there. Excavations at this ancient Cretan city, running since 1985, uncovered a necropolis at Orthi Petra with burials corresponding closely to funerary practices described in Homer — cremation pyres, warrior burials with weapons, and evidence of a sacrificed captive, paralleling the funeral of Patroclus in the Iliad. For Homeric archaeology this is among the most significant sites anywhere, because it suggests the epics preserve memory of real Geometric-period practice rather than pure invention.

The museum, opened in 2016, is Crete's first purpose-built site museum, and it displays the finds beside the excavation that produced them: gold jewellery, bronzework, ceramics, funerary urns and early sculpture, covering 3000 BC to 1300 AD across Minoan, Geometric, Archaic, Roman and Byzantine phases. The building is spare and modern, set into the hillside, and the site itself can be walked.

It lies inland from Rethymno in the foothills of Mount Ida, and reaching it without a car is difficult — which is why it stays quiet even in season.

Bookable options generally combine it with the surrounding area: Arkadi Monastery, site of a mass self-immolation during the 1866 revolt against Ottoman rule and a Cretan national symbol, and Margarites, a village of working potteries. Current options are shown below.