Lato.

It's been sunny and windy again today. it would have been a good day to do some washing but instead I went to the zoo. 

Today I planted some lavender and curry plants that I had grown from cuttings, in the gravel garden. Then I went on to weed the woodchip in the children's play area before turning my attention to nearer the entrance. The gravel by the ferrets desperately needs weeding but I only did what I call an emergency weeding removing anything that looked as if it was close to going to seed. Instead I weeded some of the smaller strips by the enclosures and behind the barriers as I think it looks bad if they are overgrown. The gravel will have to wait until next time.

Down in our front garden I love watching the bees. Currently their favourite flowers are the stachys and the Ruta followed by the hardy geraniums and the linaria. Ruta gets away with being the only yellow flowered plant in my carefully designed shingle garden due to it being my namesake and it does have good blue foliage. The only other yellow flowers in this garden are the daffs, Welsh poppies and hypericum all of which were here originally.

 

Imagine my surprise when I stood in the shade of a tree in Lato, the site of a Dorian (pre Minoan and earlier) city close to the present day village of Kritsa, and saw a clump of Ruta. In fact it grew everywhere throughout the ruins but I didn't see it growing anywhere else.

(Apologies for showing this view again) I took this photo when we did our 'not the gorge' walk. It shows the road leading to the entrance to the site but not the excavated ruins which sit in a dip of the hill. From this position the city controlled access to the fertile eastern plateau.

The map below shows that the territory of Lato reached to just beyond Plaka on the coast.

The city had strong walls all around. Here Peter is going through the north-western gate into a small easily defended space.

From there the main street consisted of steps leading up the hill. On the left were dwelling houses,

while on the other side were workshops including a pottery.

We climbed the nearly two and a half thousand year old steps and from the hillside beyond,

we could see more public buildings built into the rocks on the other arm of the city.

These included a small temple which still had the stone altar in the inner room.

From there we could see right down to the coast and the modern city of Agios Nikolaos. Unlike Lytos which had be razed to the ground by their rivals from Knossos Lato simply declined in favour of a more useful port close to the modern city. 

It was a really lovely site to visit with sufficient information boards (and a guide app from a QR thingy). It wasn't crowded at all either. I think there were three or four cars in the car park by the time we left.