AGIA PELAGIA

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The coastal resort of Agia Pelagia is built along a wonderful sandy bay, where the sea is calm and the water crystal clear even in the windy days. The bay of Agia Pelagia is ideal for combining sea sports with relaxation. The visitor will find well trained instructors that offer lessons for sea sports such as water-ski, wind surf, canoe. Agia Pelagia offers unique high standard hotel facilities as well as many small hotels and pensions. Agia Pelagia has also an important history and significant archaeological findings. Agia Pelagia is very popular with tourists, since it provides all the amenities they expect from a modern resort. From Fodele, we take the new 'national road' for a while, in an easterly direction.
After some eight kilometres we turn off this road and head down to the left, towards the coastal village of Agia Pelagia, a modern tourist village which stretches along the shores of an attractive sheltered bay where the northerly winds of summer do not penetrate.
A long beach with enticing yellow sand - which becomes coarser and white in some places - and little white pebbles accounts for the area's importance as a resort.
Agia Pelagia and the little cove of Lygaria which lies about one kilometre away constitute a most attractive unit.
Agia Pelagia takes its name from the church of St Pelagia which stood about 1 km. to the west of the bay and was a dependency of the Savvathianon Convent.
On the northern shore of the bay is a cave known as 'Evresi' ('finding-place'), and it is said that an icon of the saint was discovered there. This, according to the archaeologists, was the site of ancient Apollonia.
At the spot known as Kladotos, recent digs have yielded both Minoan and Hellenistic finds.
Chamber tombs of the Late Minoan period, hewn out of the rock, have also come to light.
However, the main find was the Prytaneion, headquarters of the elders of the town, which was built in the 4th century BC and destroyed in the 2nd century.
Houses have also been disovered, together with a pottery workshop.
We return to the crossroads. To the left, is the coastal village of Linoperamata. We take the old national road to the right, and after passing through the seaside tourist resort of Ammoudara, reach Herakleio.