Figure 2. Aerial View of the Palace of Malia, seen from the North-West. Photograph G. Cantoro (IMS-FORTH) © FSA

If the broad brushstrokes of the building’s history are known to us, many questions remain regarding the architectural and stratigraphical development of the Palace of Malia. A new project for the study of the Palace, with a view to publication, was begun in 2014 under the direction of Maud Devolder and aimed to address precisely these questions. Beyond the date of the construction of the building, the aim is to examine: the sequence of architectural development and the phases of protopalatial occupation of the edifice until its destruction in Middle Minoan IIB; the sequence of architectural development and the phases of neopalatial occupation of the edifice, until its destruction in a late phase of the Recent Minoan IA, or even of Recent Minoan IB; and its reoccupation in later phases. For each of the major periods of Minoan history, the goal is to establish the state and functions of the edifice. This objective forms part of more general research questions, i.e. concerning the origin of the Minoan palaces, their architectural development, their internal functioning and how they operated with respect to their place in each establishment (how did they complement the activities practiced in the city and in the peri-urban space?), and also their role in the political, economic, and social organization of the island. The new project plans to examine these questions by offering a synthesis of investigations already conducted on the edifice while also providing a new perspective of the latter. The project is based on a new architectural study of the ruins and of material conserved in the storage rooms of the French School of Athens in addition to the Ephoria of ancient Greek monuments in Malia. This will enable us to tie together data from previous excavations and surveys conducted by Olivier Pelon with a new study of the ruins and the material found there. 
 

Figure 3. Plan of the palace of Malia (final phase), based on plans drawn up by E. Andersen (Pelon 1980, plan 28) and M. Schmid and N. Rigopoulous (Pelon 2002, pl. XXXII). The rooms (in Arabic numerals) are preceded by the number of the Sector to which they belong (in Roman figures). © FSA

Architectural study of the ruin has already allowed us to reveal how the neopalatial edifice integrated the remains of the protopalatial Palace. Observation of the walls of the West Storehouses has in this regard indicated the presence of protopalatial walls constructed on interlocking layers placed on top of each other. These layers are composed of layers mixing rubble with large quantities of earth, each of which seems to have been pressed down using a wooden device before the next layer was added. These walls, of which only some vestiges remain, are linked to a floor composed of protopalatial plaster and are incorporated into the neopalatial edifice (fig. 4). Their preservation is sometimes limited to a head of a wall obscured by modern restorations, but they attest to the existence in the western wing of the protopalatial Palace of a series of narrow, parallel rooms which, it is suggested, served to store staple provisions. 

    To the west, the narrow rooms formed using these palatial walls — probably storerooms — are bordered by a facade with a euthynteria composed of blocks of grey-black and sandstone grey crystalline limestone that were reused in a number of different ways (column bases, doorsteps or lintels) in the neopalatial Palace (fig. 5). The precise form of the walls constructed on this euthynteria is not yet known, but it should be remembered that the facades of the protopalatial Palaces of Knossos and Phaistos are also built on a limestone euthynteria and that there these facades are constructed on top of blocks of orthostates. The restoration in the western wing of the Palace of Malia of storerooms composed of narrow rooms and bordered by a levelling foundation in limestone thus seems to reinforce the idea of an ‘architectural community’ of Minoan Palaces in the Protopalatial period.