Crete-Discover the Unknown Crete

small stone houses of the shepherds and
peasants who took refuge here during the
months of mountain pasture. Almost always
rectangular in form - but also, at times,
circular like the tholos (beehive) tombs - the
building of the mitates involved choosing
with care the individual stones, evaluating
the shape and dimensions in order to lay
them expertly one on top of another until a
perfect wall was formed through which
there filtered neither sun, nor wind nor rain.
At the centre of the single room a robust
tree trunk with a forked top functions as a
column, holding up the roof of branches and
canes, whilst the entrance is marked by two
vertical pilasters surmounted by a stone slab,
a modest version of the monumental portals
of the ancient cities or of megalithic houses.
Now abandoned and used only
sporadically, the mitates contain small signs
of an austere life: a blackened hearth, the
occasional cooking pot with a hole in it,
frayed ropes for tying up the animals, or
troughs cut into the stone. Observing these
lifeless houses it is natural to wonder how
much longer they will resist sun, wind and
rain before crumbling definitively.
The remains of
old stone houses
or mitates are
part of the
landscape as
much as the
rocky hills and
withered trees
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