Reconstructed Ruins, Palace of Knossos, Crete, 1960s

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Reconstructed Ruins, Palace of Knossos, Crete, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

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Reconstructed Ruins, Palace of Knossos, Crete, 1960s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1960–1969

AA-2026-F8DE11

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Sir Arthur Evans dug up a Bronze Age palace on Crete and then, not content with what the ground actually offered, decided to rebuild large chunks of it in poured concrete, on the theory that tourists deserved a complete picture rather than a pile of correct rubble. The result, by the 1960s, was this: a Minoan structure roughly four thousand years old wearing a paint job and a skeleton that were both younger than most of the people photographing it.

The ochre trim and the squat red columns look confident and finished, which is exactly the problem historians would spend decades complaining about. Evans built what he believed the palace should have looked like, and several generations of visitors have since mistaken his guess for the Bronze Age's actual handiwork.

The staircase on the right survives largely as excavated, patient and unpainted, doing the one thing original stonework does better than any reconstruction ever will: it just sits there, being actually old.

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