Rhodes

Rhodes, Greece

The cobblestone Street of the Knights in Rhodes Old Town paved with pebbles, framed by medieval stone arches at golden hour.

Rhodes pairs a knights' walled town and a Greek acropolis with long beaches and a loud summer coast.

The place

Rhodes (Ρόδος) lies in the south-east Aegean, south-east of Athens and north-east of Crete, and it is the island the Dodecanese has long treated as its capital. It is the largest of that group and the ninth island in the Mediterranean by area. The population is 127613. The ground rises to 1215 metres, so the interior is a ridge of pines and villages rather than a flat ribbon of sand. Pine slopes drop to bays on both coasts. The principal town, also called Rhodes, occupies the northern point: a medieval walled quarter beside a modern harbour and a resort coast that runs away to the west and east. Old nicknames still circulate. Island of the Sun recalls Helios, the patron the island claimed in antiquity. Pearl Island is the softer compliment. Island of the Knights remembers the Knights of Saint John, who governed here from 1310 until 1522 and left the walls that still define the old town. The Colossus, a great figure of Helios, has gone; the knightly streets have not. Summer bends the north of the island around visitors. Faliraki in particular is built for late nights and strong drink, and it can feel rough. Lindos, the southern castles and the sand spit at Prasonisi show a quieter Rhodes, windier and less packaged.

Its story

People have lived on Rhodes from the late Neolithic onward. The clearest early trace is a cave at Kalythies, on the north-eastern side, where those first inhabitants left their remains. Long before that, in the Late Pleistocene, a dwarf elephant species with no modern name lived on the same ground. Town life gathered toward the end of the Early Bronze Age. Asomatos is the earliest urban centre identified so far, and among its pottery are vessels shaped like ducks, evidence of ties to Cyprus and to other Aegean shores. Around 1600 BCE Minoan Crete kept an outpost at Tiranda on the north-western shore, most plausibly to serve passing trade, though the city of Rhodes was founded only in 408 BCE, when Lindos, Ialysos and Kameiros united. Mycenaean Greeks took root after that Cretan presence. Later rulers recorded for the island include the Achaemenid Empire, the Delian League, the League of Corinth, Rome and Byzantium. In the medieval age the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem made the town a fortress-capital, and the walls they built are still the face of the old city. Ottoman government came after the knights. The Kingdom of Italy held the Dodecanese later still, which is why Italian churches and family lines remain on a Greek island. The Colossus of Rhodes, a figure of Helios that ancient writers set among the world's wonders, has not survived; the knights' masonry and the older Greek acropolis have. Rhodes today is that Greek island and that ancient polis at once.

What to see

Culture

On Rhodes the leading faith is Greek Orthodox. The Metropolis of Rhodes has its cathedral seat on the island. In villages set back from the resort front, the year still turns on parish festivals, baptisms and Easter, with the church as the public room of the community. A Latin Catholic minority persists, largely families who kept Italian roots after the years of Italian rule, and the Catholic archdiocese still ministers to them. A Turkish Muslim community lives here too, among them people whose forebears in Crete and the Dodecanese turned to Islam under the Ottomans. They stayed when Muslim families in northern Greece had to leave, because Italy, not the Greek state, was then administering the Dodecanese. The result in the town is a quiet proximity: Orthodox parish, Catholic church and mosque within one set of walls. Daily manners split along the same line as the map. On the northern coast, English is the language of menus and the night is commercial. Inland, afternoons still slow down, and Sunday belongs to liturgy and a long family table. In a church or monastery on Rhodes, cover your shoulders and knees, and keep your phone lowered while a service is underway.

What to wear

Clothes on Rhodes depend on whether the day is a festival, a beach or a church. Festival dress, still worn for dance and saint's days, uses cotton, linen and, in winter, wool: embroidered shirts, waistcoats, full skirts or dark trousers, and a woman's headscarf. Woven bands and embroidery are the textile note, practical Aegean work rather than court silk. Most people, most days, dress as they do in any warm European city — jeans, light shirts, trainers — and from late spring the resort coast lives in swimwear, sarongs and sandals. Evenings in the town of Rhodes sharpen that only slightly: a pressed shirt or a simple dress, and shoes that can handle polished medieval stone. A visitor's bag should cover sun, sea and sacred buildings. Linen, a hat and swimwear belong on the beaches; a shirt and a knee-length layer are what monasteries, including Filerimos, and parish churches expect on top of beach clothes. The lanes of the old town and the acropolis path at Lindos punish thin soles, so footwear needs a grip. At Prasonisi the wind can chill a bright day, and a light layer is worth packing beside the towel.

What to eat

Plan it

Best time. April to October is when flights from across Europe serve Rhodes, and May, June, September and October fall inside that window. Winter seats are usually the Athens or Thessaloniki services inside Greece.

How long. four or five

Getting there. Most arrivals use Diagoras airport, code RHO, set along the western shore of Rhodes, with a bus or taxi completing the ride into town. Ferries tie the island to Piraeus, to Symi and Tilos, and to Marmaris, Bodrum, Fethiye and Datça. Liners berth in the working port on the old quarter's eastern side.

Budget. mid

Tips

Etiquette

Nearby

Sources