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The settlement is located in the north corner of the village of Tylisos, south-west of Heraklion on the road to Anoyeia and Mount Psiloritis. Although the site of the Minoan town was known early in the 19th Century, it was finally excavated by Hadzidakis from 1909-1913. Further excavations were carried out by N. Platon in 1953-55 and by A. Kanta in 1971.
The Minoan town occupied a large area and there are traces of houses from earlier periods (EM II to MM II) scattered throughout the site. Hadzidakis excavated only three of the main buildings and the two most important of these, Houses A and C, date from the very end of MM III. They were destroyed by fire in LM IB. The site was later reoccupied early in LM IIIA.
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House A is a large mansion entered from the east through a pillared court. There are two parts to the building. The northern part was the storage area, and two magazines were located here. A number of large pithoi were discovered here, and over 50 were found throughout the building. The southern part was a residential area, with a number of rooms organised around a Minoan Hall. In one of these rooms a tripod cooking pot was found. In the centre of the living quarters there was a light well. The rooms to the west of the light well produced the best finds. Room 3, the most northerly of the three rooms contained jars, vases, loomweights and a bronze figurine which had almost certainly fallen from the floor above. Room 4, to the south, contained many small jars and Room 5 originally contained four large bronze cauldrons which were found by a peasant before the excavations began. Two Linear A tablets and some clay sealings were also recovered from the room. The Minoan Hall itself did not yield up anything significant. To the north-east of the Hall there was a lustral basin. A staircase led to the upper floor.
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House B has a much simpler design than House A and may have been an annexe although it might actually have predated House A. The building seems to have contained storage rooms, but little was found apart from a large collection of LM I vases in one of the rooms. The building was destroyed by fire.
House C has a long corridor connecting a possible shrine in the southern part of the building to the store rooms in the western part of the building and finally the residential area in the northern part of the building. Later on a LM III building was built on top of House C and even later still a Greek sanctuary covered the northern part of the building. A pithos found in the storage area was inscribed in Linear A.
The cistern dates from a later period, LM III. Like the cistern at Zakros it can be entered by steps. An aqueduct with clay pipes can also still be seen. The name Tylisos is to be found in the Linear B tablets from Knossos and is a pre-Greek name. A peak sanctuary is located on the hill above the site which remained in use until at least LM IA.
The site is open to the public and a small admission charge is made.