If you plan to spend your day touring historical and archaeological sites, then the best thing to do is go on to visit Eleftherna, where the findings from the ancient city of the same name are located. The village is characterised by traditional architecture and vaulted windows in a very beautiful landscape. There is no precise date for the construction of the ancient city, but according to the scientists, there must have been life there in the geometric period, i.e. in 970-820 BC. It was built on a hill, and enclosed by fortifications, sections of which can still be seen today. There was a long, bridgelike entrance and an apparently impregnable fortress protecting the only entrance to the city. The aqueduct and water reservoirs that have been found bear testimony to the organisation of the city and the cultural level of its inhabitants. On the north side of the hill there is a temple, possibly of Apollo, which was used AD by Christians for religious purposes. Tombs hewed out of rock and engraved sarcophagi provide information about the civilisation of ancient Eleftherna. Eleftherna flourished in Roman years and in the early Byzantine period. It was one of the most powerful autonomous cities. Its inhabitants were merchants, farmers or sailors, and it is supposed that they used the bay of Fodele as a port. The city's development is also obvious from the bridges that surrounded it, samples of a developed architecture. As an independent power, it minted its own coins, with Apollo on one side and Artemis on the other. As a powerful city, it developed an enmity with Knossos, resulting in a war sport ween them in 222 BC. Yet, that same year, the two became allies in the civil war of the Cretan cities... Diogenes Apolloniates, the physicist who lived in the 5th century BC and was a student of Anaximenes, was from Eleftherna.