Very good museum covering the Cretan culture and history from the Minoans through the classical period. Well worth the 90 minutes we spent there before going to Knossos. Well laid out exhibits with sufficient interpretation to make the collection understandable and relevant. Highly recommend.

As part of a tour of the city and Knossos, we visited the museum with a guide, which was very interesting. It was great to see some of the original artifacts from Knossos on display, including King Minos' ring. Seeing a wooden replica of Knossos in the museum really showed just how big it was. A fascinating tour, although we only had time to see the Minoan section.

Bought the combo ticket with Knossos which we visited first. I am not great at picturing hung which aren’t there, so for us Knossos was a total bust. The museum on the other hand was amazing. We would have been much better off had we just gone there and skipped the palace entirely. All signs have English translations so we were able to read and understand as much as we wanted. Each room had a theme which helped orient us, even if we didn’t want to read anything more about the individual artifacts. Took about an hour and 15 min for us to go through, including grabbing a soda from the shop and sitting in the shaded courtyard. Money well spent.

I was a little underwhelmed by the palace of Knossos. Spoilt perhaps by Pompeii, it was difficult to imaagine what life was like there. But, the next day we visited Heraklion and its Archaeological museum and there is just the right amount of rooms / exhibits and it fairly blew me away ; 2000 BC and such an advanced civilisation. Heraklion itself aint much and the dotto train was a ioke

Heraklion Archaeological Museum offers a half a day programme for those interested in ancient history. Its rooms are on two levels in a fairly modern building. Don't even try to look at each item on display - there is a lot of similar pieces and also a large number of items so it can get repetitive unless you are really ardent. Download the app at the site to familiarize with the really outstanding handicraft, as they are not specifically labelled and so won't stand out. I particularly loved the clay tablets with ancient scripts Linear A and B.

The museum has a huge collection of ceramics. The exhibition is prepared in a very traditional way - an exhibit plus a board with an explanation. This may be boring, especially for children. It is worth booking 2-3 hours if you want to read all the descriptions.

We decided to start our Crete visit here. It provided an opportunity to learn about the different civilizations that lived on Crete. Many, many artifacts on display. Actually after visiting a few historical site throughout the island you'll learn where many of these antiquities come from. There was so much to see that we will visit the museum again on our last day in Crete to bring our visit full circle. Visit early in the day if you can. We arrived there a few minutes after opening to an extremely short line. On exiting about noon we were shocked by how many people were waiting in line to get in and this was in late October, supposedy then slow season.

We took a break from our beach holiday so that we could visit this musuem. We went to the Palace of Knossos last year and as we did not visit this museum then, it was only right to now visit this great musuem. Right in the centre of Heraklion and very easy to find, this musuem really compliments the visit to the Palace of Knossos and provides a wonderful insight into Cretan history. This museum has many artefacts from the Ancient Minoan civilization which really shows just how advanced they were and also provides a great depth of history and in some ways shows how it links with Ancient Greece and Egypt as it reflects how the Minoans traded with Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. We really enjoyed our visit to this musuem and although it's not free to enter (like most archaeological sites in Greece), it was definately worth the visit.

A brilliant museum with numerous wonderful exhibits grouped together into sensible informative topics. The ceramics are wonderful and the ceramic baths and sarcophagi especially fabulous. My wife sensibly asked staff to point out highlights given our limited time! I didn’t! As a result she showed me photographs of wonderful things I didn’t get to though she did take me upstairs to the rescues. Don’t miss this, much better than a trip to Knossos! It also has really thorough and clear interpretation, in English!

We visited in March so it was quiet. The rooms were easy to navigate with clear information (English and Greek) and layout. We had visited the Knossos Palace site earlier in the day and hence benefited from having some understanding of the size (large!) and complexity of the site - many not all) of the artefacts on display were from Knossos We were surprised and impressed by the range of Cycladic art display. The Minoan civilisation artefacts were quite incredible. The fresco room was one of the highlights but all of it was impressive. Do not miss this! Quite one of the best archaeological museums we have ever visited.