Malia, a great Minoan city, remains little known. An impressive maze of levelled walls not only marks out the plan of a palace but a whole city of craftsmen. The main interest of the ruins resides in the fact that Malia ceased to be inhabited at the end of the second millennium BC, after the natural disaster that struck all of northern Crete, so the original layout of the city is not cluttered by later constructions. Malia appears to the visitor like a line drawing of ochre-red stone.