Cretan architecture

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Cretan architecture. Large palace complexes, designed in the second millennium bc and later replaced with even grander structures planned on asymmetrical lines, with vast corridors, many chambers, courts, and columned halls, are known to have been built at Knossos and Phaestos in Crete. At the ‘Palace of King Minos’ at Knossos there was a formal axially planned arrangement with a great stair leading to the state rooms (so-called ‘Minoan’ architecture). Painted decorations were plentiful, vigorous, and strongly coloured, while contractura columns (often of cypress-wood) were set with the smaller diameter at the base, so the taper was downwards, without entasis, a curious reversal of natural form. The primitive character of Cretan architectural detail attracted some C20 architects, notably Plečnik.

Bibliography

Cruickshank (ed.) (1996);
Dinsmoor (1950);
Turner (1996)

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