Agia Roumeli Tourist Information

The ruins of ancient Tarrha, which flourished chiefly in the Roman period, are at the site of the present day village of Ayia Roumeli, on the coast where the famous Samaria Gorge comes out at the sea. The city minted coins with an agrimi (Cretan wild goat) and a bee on each side. According to myth the priest of Tarrha, Karmanoras the purifier, was greatly revered; he is also known from the myth about the union of Apollo and Acacallis. Mrs G. Weinberg excavated many cist graves in the ancient city, containing jewellery and an Early Byzantine basilica on the site of the church of the Panayia. The basilica was built on the site of a Hellenistic temple, perhaps an oracle of the god Apollo. Its walls still stand to a height of 3 metres. A fragment of the mosaic floor is decorated with combinations of circles and semicircles. It dates to the 5th/6th c. AD. An interesting feature of ancient Tarrha was the existence either there or at some place nearby of a glass?making industry; this at least was the interpretation given by the excavator to the large quantity of burnt glass found in the area. The difficulty of communicating with the Cretan hinterland, since even today the only links are by sea, suggests that the raw materials may have been imported and the finished products exported; another theory is that the burnt glass came from a ship wrecked in the bay of Ayia Roumeli. The nature of the glass objects, however, and the market for which they were destined are unknown.

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