City
Hiera
Ruinen bei Hierapetra oder Girapetra
Listen to the story
Hiera on the map is only half a name: the Cretan city was really called Hierapytna, as the Greek geographer Strabo, the Roman writer Pliny and the geographer Ptolemy all record, and its ruins lie near Hierapetra. The second part of the word was probably dropped in copying. A Greek coastal handbook made the opposite slip, later calling the city just Pydna. Even the surviving half is worn, since the final letter has faded and older copies read it as Hiera. The city lay at the narrowest point of the island, near a sacred mountain, and the road on the map simply ends here.