The Palace at Knossos, and indeed Minoan towns generally, enjoyed a standard of water management and sanitation that would have remained an envy for all Europe until the Hellenistic and, in particular, Roman times.
Their walls were decorated with elaborate and colourful frescoes, in which the Minoans come across as a people with a love for life and peaceful in the main, at one with the natural world around them. A folk inclined to dancing and the enjoyment of large public spectacles and athletic contests (but note these are often violent!).