Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 19/07/2026 20:13:00

Standing at the crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet, Rhodes has been coveted, conquered, and colonised by every significant power of the ancient and medieval world — Minoans, Dorians, Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Arab raiders, Knights of St John, Ottomans, Italians, and finally Greeks — and each occupation has left its mark on an island whose history reads like a compressed account of Western civilisation itself. The result is a layered cultural landscape of extraordinary richness, from the Acropolis of Lindos above its Bronze Age harbour to the UNESCO-listed medieval city of Rhodes Town — the finest surviving medieval city in the eastern Mediterranean. The Old Town of Rhodes — enclosed within walls built by the Knights of St John in the 14th and 15th centuries, expanded and maintained through the Ottoman period, and surviving substantially intact — is a living medieval city of cobbled lanes, Turkish mosques converted from Byzantine churches, the Ottomans' hammams and covered bazaar, the magnificent Street of the Knights (the most complete medieval street surviving anywhere in the world), and the Palace of the Grand Master (a 14th-century fortress rebuilt magnificently by the Italian colonial authorities in the 1930s). Walking the old town at night — through lanes lit by stone lanterns, past the gurgling fountains of Ottoman fountainheads, under arches connecting buildings across narrow passageways — is one of the Mediterranean's great atmospheric experiences. The Street of the Knights (Ippoton) — a straight, cobbled lane running from the Palace of the Grand Master down to the Byzantine Hospital of the Knights (now the Archaeological Museum) — is lined on both sides with the inns of the eight tongues (nations) of the Knights Hospitaller, each in the architectural style of its country of origin, creating a remarkable 500-metre microcosm of late medieval European architecture. The Archaeological Museum holds extraordinary Hellenistic sculptures including the Aphrodite of Rhodes, and the Byzantine Museum in the converted Church of the Virgin of the Castle displays icons of exceptional quality. Beyond the Old Town, Lindos — a whitewashed Aegean village on the east coast beneath a dramatically perched acropolis above one of the most beautiful bays in Greece — is the island's second great historical experience. The Acropolis of Lindos (with its Doric Temple of Athena Lindia, Hellenistic stoa, and Byzantine church) provides a panorama over the azure bay that has drawn travellers since antiquity. The butterfly valley of Petaloudes, the wine village of Emponas on the slopes of Mount Attavyros, and the thermal waters of Kallithea Springs round out an island of diverse pleasures far beyond its beach resort reputation.