The ancient city of Lyktos or Lyttos is situated between the current villages of Ksidas and Aski where now stand the churches of Timios Stavros and Agios Georgios.

The high number of references to the town from many Greek ancient writers demonstrate that the history of Lyttos amounts to thousands of years and that it was one of the most ancient and powerful towns in Crete.

Although the excavations in the area reveal traces of habitation from the Hellenistic years onwards (630 B.C.), the archeologists Georgios Rethemiotakis and Angeliki Lempesi have excavated traces of habitation from the time of the destruction of Lyttos by the Knossians (219 B.C.) in excavated residences of the Hellenistic period.

From the Roman period, the city was subject to new workings as testified by the architectural remnants.There are many inscriptions and statues discovered by the 13th Ephorate of Pre-historic and Classic Antiquities, partly financed by the local communities.

Numerous vestiges of ancient structures, objects, and broken marbles are seen, as well as an immense arch of a Roman aqueduct, by which the water was carried across a deep valley by means of a wide marble channel. Traces of the aqueduct which brought its water supply from Kournia, near Krasi village, are still visible today in the rural road to Kastamonitsa village. Lyktos had also a theatre, built in the slope of the hill the design of which we know only from the drawings of Belli (1586).

Finally, the most important discovery is that of a room of nearly 14 metres by 11.40 metres, with marble flooring and a series of four stone platforms along its two longer sides. The room was erected, according to the inscription that was found at the site, at the beginning of the second century B.C. This room was identified as the chamber of the Roman deputies of the city and was very probably destroyed by an earthquake at 365 AD.

Lyktos appears to have still been inhabited in the 7^th Century AD as indicated by the excavation of late-roman shops in the area. (Late Roman Empire, 284-610 AD)

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