Heraklion Lychnostatis Folk Museum

Location: Hersonisos village
Don't miss: Museums guide (free admission dates and other useful info)

Located close to Hersonissos, the Lychnostatis Museum is an open-air folklore museum founded by the collector Yiorgis Markakis between 1986 and 1992. Both the museum and its documentary productions have received prestigious international awards.

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Constructed exclusively with natural materials like wood, stone, and clay, it aims to recreate aspects of agrarian daily life in Crete. Thus, its ethnographic collection includes a stone-built farmhouse, a middle-class house, a chapel, a windmill, an olive press, a threshing floor, a weaving room, a pottery workshop, a shepherd’s shelter, a raki distillery, an old school and many other interesting items.

It also has a permanent collection of works from the anonymous collective cultural heritage of Crete, as well as a pre-industrial technology section. Its lush gardens function as an open-air museum too, housing several kinds of fruit trees, aromatic herbs, cactuses, shrubs and minerals that are common to the island.

Moreover, Lychnostatis houses temporary art exhibitions and has an outdoor theater where various events take place in summer. On the premises, visitors will also find a traditional products department with aromatic infusions and various delicacies made with figs, as well as a traditional coffee shop serving traditional Cretan drinks.

Bear in mind that, as this is an open-air museum, it works only from mid-spring to mid-autumn.