Late Bronze Age Greek Architecture
Minoans and Mycenaeans
Knossos
Around 1700 BC, a great earthquake shook
the island of Crete and knocked
down the palaces (or big houses) that many people had been living in.
The people rebuilt these palaces much bigger and more beautiful than
before, but still along the same lines of all the rooms being stuck
together (agglutinative). This was not long after the first great palaces
of Western Asia
and Egypt, and
maybe the Cretans got the idea from there.
A Tholos tomb at Mycenae
Around 1400 BC on the mainland, the Greeks
were building big stone tombs for their kings
and queens. These are called tholos (THOUGH-lows) tombs. They start
out big at the bottom and gradually get narrower as they go up:
Lion Gate at Mycenae
The Greeks on the mainland also built palaces for themselves, around
1400 BC. These combined the decorations of
the Cretan palaces with the old megaron
form to make the typical Mycenean palace, which we have found not only
at Mycenae but also at many other Late Bronze Age sites around Greece
like Tiryns (TEER-ins) and Pylos (PIE-lows).
To find out more about Late Bronze Age Greek architecture, check out these books on Amazon.com or from your library:
Greece in the Bronze Age, by Emily Vermeule (1972). Now rather out of date, but there's no newer book that pulls it all together.
Minoan and Mycenaean Art, by Reynold Higgins (2nd revised edition 1997) The standard book for college students.
Aegean Art and Architecture (Oxford History of Art), by Donald Preziosi, Louise A. Hitchcock (2000)
Knossos, A Complete Guide to the Palace of Minos, by Anna Michailidou (1995)
Archaic architecture
Main Greek architecture page
Main architecture page
This page was reviewed for accuracy by Ioannis Georganas in March 2005.
