R

hodes

 

April 1-10, 2006






Greek flag



We got to Rhodes after a ten-hour ferry ride from Crete, the other BIG Greek island. Crete was great, but at first blush Rhodes is visually more appealing even if also more touristy. We arrived at eleven o'clock at night and wandered right into the old city sort of blind. Jan sat in some kind of square with the luggage while Gerry went off with a hotel-keeper to check out the rooms he had to offer. [Not taking the bags immediately, gives us some minor leverage when negotiating room rates.] While waiting, she idly watched the locals as they wandered to and from whatever restaurants and night-clubs they were frequenting this Saturday night. After a little while she started to pay more attention to the square itself and noticed some big stones that sort of looked like millstones and then looked again and realized they were column bases. She looked further still and realized that the "square" she was in was actually a ruined church! It's hard to describe how romantic the place felt in the late evening, dimly lit, with a massive stone gate through the defensive walls visible on one side and this ruined church become thoroughfare on the other, and the comings and goings of "le tout Rhodos" to watch into the bargain .

The other nice thing was that the air was warm. That might sound odd, but here in the southern Mediterranean it can get quite chilly after dark in the winter months. The balmy air at such a late hour was proof positive that spring had arrived — and not a moment too soon. We have been surprised by the low temperatures we've had to put up with as well as the relative scarcity of good heating systems. It should have been no surprise to encounter higher temperatures here than elsewhere in Greece because Rhodes is the southernmost of the Greek Islands. It is a lesson we remembered when we started moving north once more into and through Turkey.

So, as you can see, we have only good things to say about the medieval city of Rhodes, the biggest city by far on Rhodes island. We're very nicely pleased by it and rate it the number-one town we've seen in Greece. A great combination of quaintness and history. You might call it a mini-Jerusalem, since it has walls around the city and some very old Crusader buildings. In addition it has a nice harbor and we've been able to see snow-covered mountains in Turkey, about 50 miles to the east.The island is small enough (100 km long) that you can get around it really easily in a few days in a rented car. We opted to do it by public transport and failed to complete the circuit we had planned. Buses in the south of the island are non-existent in the off-season and so we were forced to go south along the east coast and then come back to Rhodes to go south along the west coast. We enjoyed the ancient city of ?? and the crusader castle at ?? on the east side, but on the west side gave up on Lindos and its crusader castle because of the bad weather we encountered on our trip there.

Rhodes town was founded about 408 B.C. by the consolidation of three older Greek towns. Not a lot remains of that but we gave ourselves a walking tour of what we could find. This includes the old Acropolis that has a partially reconstructed temple of Apollo and a great stadium. There are also some remants of the ancient city walls, bits of Hellenic houses, and (which we didn't see) the Hellenic cemetery.

Fast forward to about 1250 A.D. when Rhodes was taken over by the Knights of St John. They built a "Crusader Castle" with fortress walls, much of which remains. One day we toured the highly-restored/rebuilt Grand Master's Palace and walked as much as allowed along the walls; perhaps two-thirds of them. The next day we went to the old Hospice which is a great building and now houses the archeology museum. Nothing can compare to that of Athens, but they have a good selection; enough to occupy us for three hours.

Around 1625 the Ottoman Empire took Rhodes away from the Knights of St John. Many Turks came then and remained through Italian possession (1912-1948). The new or Turkish town consists of a mixture of Turkish styles, with old wooden second-story bay windows and Italian 1930s modernism overlaid by 1960s and beyond growth. Fascinating for the eye that cares about archetecture.




March 21, 2006