Excavations have attested that the settlement of Krissa was founded in the Middle Helladic period. It was fortified in the Mycenaean period, when its population increased through the relocation of the inhabitants of the city of Kira within the walls of the acropolis (region of St. George). At the end of the Mycenaean period the city was abandoned. Homer mentions Krissa both in the “Hymn to Apollo” and in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad. He relates that the founder of the city was the son of Phokos, Krisos, father of the king Strophius, in whose court Orestes spent his childhood, becoming closest friend of the king’s son,  Pyladis.  According to Strabo, on the other hand, the city was large and powerful enough to have founded at least one colony, namely Metapontium, close to Tarentum in Southern Italy. The plain below Krisa is the “Krisaion pedion” of Antiquity, now planted with olive trees;  at some point, after the First Sacred War, it was proclaimed sacred and it was forbidden to cultivate it. The site has been excavated by the French Archaeological School and the Ephorae of Antiquities of Phokis.