The island of the Knights — where a medieval walled city built by crusading warrior-monks survives intact, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World once stood at the harbour entrance, and 300 days of sun make it Greece's most visited island
Rhodes is the largest island in the Dodecanese archipelago with a population of 115,000 at the southwestern tip of the Aegean Sea, 18km from the Turkish coast. Its medieval Old Town (UNESCO World Heritage 1988) is the largest inhabited medieval city in Europe — 4km of walls enclosing an extraordinary intact townscape of crusader palace, mosque, synagogue, Byzantine church, and Ottoman hamam, where 6,000 people still live in medieval buildings. The ancient Colossus of Rhodes — a 33m bronze statue of the sun god Helios — stood at the harbour entrance from 280 BCE until an earthquake in 226 BCE,…
Rhodes was settled from around 3000 BCE; the city of Rhodes was founded in 408 BCE through the merger (synoikism) of three earlier Rhodian cities. The Colossus was built after 304 BCE to celebrate the defeat of a Macedonian siege, and its fall in 226 BCE prompted sympathy aid from across the Greek world (suggesting Rhodes was then a major Mediterranean commercial power). The Knights Hospitaller, expelled from Jerusalem, took control of Rhodes in 1309 and held it for 213 years — building the immense Palace of the Grand Master and the Street of the Knights (still intact) while defending the isl…