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Matt Munro

Rhodes Town

Rhodes Town is really two distinct and very different towns. The Old Town lies within but utterly apart from the New Town, sealed like a medieval time capsule behind a double ring of high walls and a deep moat. Few cities can boast so many layers of architectural history, with ruins and relics of the Classical, Ottoman and Italian eras entangled in a mind-boggling maze of twisting lanes.

In season, the Old Town receives a huge daily influx of day-trippers and, especially, passengers from giant cruise-ships. Even then, you can escape the crowds by heading away from the busy commercial streets into its hauntingly pretty cobbled alleyways. Staying a night or two, and losing yourself in the labyrinth after dark, is an experience no traveller should miss.

The New Town, meanwhile, is a modern Mediterranean resort, with decent beaches, upscale shops, lively nightlife and waterfront bars servicing the package crowd.

Top attractions

These are our favorite local haunts, touristy spots, and hidden gems throughout Rhodes Town.

  • Museum

    Archaeological Museum

    A weathered, sun-kissed stone lion, visible from the street, invites visitors into the magnificent 15th-century Knights' Hospital that holds Rhodes’ superb archaeology museum. Exhibits range through several upstairs galleries, and across beautiful gardens to an annexe that’s open shorter hours in summer (9am to 4.50pm). Highlights include the exquisite Aphrodite Bathing marble statue from the 1st century BC, a pavilion displaying wall-mounted mosaics, and a reconstructed burial site from 1630 BC that held a helmeted warrior alongside his horse.

  • Historic Building

    Palace of the Grand Master

    From the outside, this magnificent castle-like palace looks much as it did when erected by the 14th-century Knights Hospitaller. During the 19th century, however, it was devastated by an explosion, so the interior is now an Italian reconstruction, completed in the '18th year of the Fascist Era' (1940). Dreary chambers upstairs hold haphazard looted artworks, so the most interesting sections are the twin historical museums downstairs, one devoted to ancient Rhodes and the other to the island’s medieval history.

  • Historic Site

    Street of the Knights

    Austere and somewhat forbidding, the Street of the Knights (Ippoton) was home from the 14th century to the Knights Hospitaller who ruled Rhodes. The knights were divided into seven ‘tongues’, or languages, according to their birthplace – England, France, Germany, Italy, Aragon, Auvergne and Provence – each responsible for a specific section of the fortifications. As wall displays explain, the street holds an ‘inn’, or palace, for each tongue. Its modern appearance, though, owes much to Italian restorations during the 1930s.

  • Area

    Hora

    The Old Town’s central commercial and residential district, south of the Street of the Knights, is known as the Hora. Having acquired its current appearance following the Ottoman takeover of 1522, it’s also called the Turkish Quarter. The most important of many churches that became mosques is the colourful, pink-domed Mosque of Süleyman, at the top of Sokratous. Across the street, the Muslim Library, founded in 1793 by Turkish Rhodian Ahmed Hasuf, houses Persian and Arabic manuscripts plus handwritten Korans.

  • Area

    Jewish Quarter

    The Jewish Quarter, an enclave of narrow lanes in the Old Town’s southeast corner, centres on Plateia Evreon Martyron (Square of the Jewish Martyrs). Now all too quiet and dilapidated, it was home a century ago to a population of 5500. Half fled in the 1930s, while 1673 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 1944; only 151 survived. The Jewish Museum of Rhodes, entered via the 1577 Kahal Shalom Synagogue – the oldest synagogue in Greece – tells the full story.

  • Historic Site

    Old Town Walls

    Rhodes' Old Town is rare indeed in retaining its 500-year-old fortifications all but intact. On weekdays, visitors can grasp their sheer scale by walking a broad, grassy (and largely unrailed) 1km stretch of the ramparts, from the Grand Master’s palace to St John’s Gate. There’s no shade, but you get superb views of the domes, minarets and gardens within the Old Town; look out across the deep surrounding moat, and pass the massive, sealed-off Bastion of St George.

  • Historic Site

    Old Town Moat

    The moat beneath the Old Town ramparts was simply a defensive ditch, never filled with water. Now landscaped as a park, with spacious lawns and lush flowers, it’s a great place to stroll or picnic. It’s accessible from the gardens near Liberty Gate in the north; at Akandia Gate in the southeast; or via stairways at the gates of St Anthony and St Athanasios. Look out for stacks of stone cannonballs, fired by Ottoman besiegers in 1480 and 1522.

  • Mosque

    Mosque of Süleyman

    Rhodes' Old Town bears many legacies from its Ottoman past. Many churches were converted to mosques during the Turkish era, and even more Muslim houses of worship were built from scratch, although most are now dilapidated. The most important is the pink-domed Mosque of Süleyman, beautifully located at the top of Sokratous. Built in 1522 to commemorate the Ottoman defeat of the knights, it was renovated in 1808, but sadly is not open to visitors.

  • Gallery

    Modern Greek Art Museum

    The main gallery of the four-part Modern Greek Art Museum, near the New Town’s northern tip, holds paintings, engravings and sculptures by some of Greece's greatest 20th-century artists. The real highlight is the top floor, devoted thanks to a bequest from his widow to the remarkable paintings of Valias Semertzidis (1911–83), whose work ranged from depictions of wartime struggle and hardship to Rhodian landscapes.