The Messara is Crete's largest plain, a broad, fertile trough between the Psiloritis range to the north and the low Asterousia hills to the south, and at its western end a long ridge rises above the valley of the Geropotamos river. On that ridge stood Phaistos, one of the great palaces of the Minoan civilisation, the culture that flourished in Crete in the second millennium BC. The first palace was built around 1900 BC and destroyed by an earthquake, and the second, rebuilt on top, was a larger and more graceful construction, with a broad staircase to the west court, storerooms, royal apartments and a central courtyard. The view alone makes the climb worth it, with Mount Ida snowy in spring on one side and the blue haze of the Libyan Sea on the other.
Phaistos is the home of one of archaeology's great puzzles, a small clay disc found in the palace in 1908, stamped on both sides with a spiral of tiny pictures of heads, shields, birds and fish. The Phaistos Disc, dated to around 1700 BC, remains undeciphered, and nobody has even proved that it is a script. It is now kept in the archaeological museum in Heraklion, but the site has a copy in the shop.
Unlike Knossos, Phaistos was never reconstructed with concrete, and the ruins stand in their natural state, honey-coloured stone on a green hill. Close by are the Minoan villa of Agia Triada and the Roman city of Gortyn, which holds a famous law code carved in stone in the fifth century BC. Matala, a small beach resort on the coast, is known for the caves cut into its sandstone cliff, which were used as tombs and later by hippies.
The roads across the Messara are broad and straightforward, with olive groves and greenhouses on either side, and the corners come only when you climb into the hills. The surface can be rough, and goats and delivery vans share the road. Tympáki and Moíres have fuel, supermarkets and tavernas, and Zarós, in the hills, is known for its spring water. Go in spring, when the flowers are out and the heat is mild, because midsummer afternoons are brutal and the site has little shade.