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Places near Timios Stavros
Houmeriako is a traditional village close to the larger village of Limnes eastwards from Neapoli in the valley of Mirabello and is spread on 3 small hills and enjoys some spectacular views down across the Limnes valley.
In the old days, it constituted the seat of the Municipality with its depended villages Vrisses, Limnes, Nikithiano, Exo Lakonia and other small settlements. It is one of the oldest villages in the area. On this land many interesting churches are preserved: Agios Panteleimon, Agia Triada, Agios Georgios, Agios Kirikos and Agios Antonios. The "Romana Portella"(Roman Gate) that used to be the residence of some unknown sovereign, is an important monument. Nikithiano is a settlement next to Houmeriako, at 2 km from Neapolis. Small and picturesque, this settlement is known for its windmills; 15 windmills in a straight line.
There is a small shop in Houmeriako, taverna and kafeneon in the village. The town of Neapolis with all its facilities including restaurants, cafeterias, shops and banks is within 2kms, whilst the cosmopolitan town of Agios Nikolaos and local beaches are approx 10 kms away.
It is dedicated to the assumption of Virgin Mary and celebrates on August 15. It is the only surviving example in eastern Crete of a ‘cross-in-square’ domed church. The main part of the church dates to the end of the 11th or early 12th century, while the attached narthex on the west side dates from the Venetian occupation.
The church was completely restored in 2008 by the 13th Archaeological Service of Byzantine Antiquities. Remarkable architectural and decorative elements of the church are its dome, the saw-tooth strip under the roofing tiles, the blind arches, the alternating masonry blocks and bricks, and the stone-carved doorframe of the entrance. All the inside parts of the masonry appear to have been covered with frescoes, which once decorated the church.
At the edge of the plain of Mirabello, under “Maha Hill”, the village of Limnes is located. Its name probably originated from the geographical phenomena of the many lakes which form after rainfall, resulting in a fertile and productive agricultural area. It is the village with the greatest number of houses, many of which have been abandoned in recent times.
Dreros (modern Driros) near Neapolis in the district of Lassithi, Crete, is a post-Minoan archaeological site, 16 km. northwest of Aghios Nikolaos. Known only by a chance remark of the ninth-century Byzantine grammarian Theognostus (De orthographia), archaeology of the site shows Dreros to have been initially colonised by mainland Greeks in the early Archaic Period about the same time as Lato and Prinias.
The early Iron Age site, first excavated in 1917, was most prosperous in the 8th–6th centuries BCE; later it became a minor satellite of Knossos and continued to be occupied into the Byzantine period. It comprises two acropoleis with an Archaic-period agora between them. South of the agora is one of the earliest free-standing Greek temples; it dates from the Geometric period (ca 750s BCE). The Delphinion, as it is called, was dedicated to Apollo Delphinios. It was excavated in 1935 by Spyridon Marinatos, who published it. Almost the whole of the city and its necropolis have been excavated, confirming that this is a post-Minoan Greek habitation; its inscriptions are in Dorian dialect. Traces of fortifications have been discovered.There is also a large communal cistern dug between the late 3rd and early 2nd century BCE, which contained Archaic inscriptions, one of which, famous as the Dreros inscription, the "sacred law of Dreros", is the earliest complete record of constitutional law found in Greece, which mentions the Dorian Cretan titles kosmos and damios.Three statuettes made of bronze sheets hammered over moulding cores (sphyrelaton) "in the early orientalizing style of the late eighth century" (Boardman) were found in the precincts of the Temple of Apollo Delphinios; they are now at the Archaeological Museum of Herakleion. They probably depict Apollo and Artemis and their mother Leto and together are known as the "Dreros Triad."In Hellenistic times, Dreros declined in importance to the extent that it was not included among the thirty Cretan cities that signed a pact with the Attalid king of Pergamum, Eumenes II, in 183 BCE.