Rhodes Travel Guide
Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the South Aegean administrative region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is the city of Rhodes, which had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. In 2022, the island had a population of 125,113 people. It is located northeast of Crete and southeast of Athens. Rhodes has several nicknames, such as "Island of the Sun" due to its patron sun god Helios, "The Pearl Island", and "The Island of the Knights", named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who ruled the island from 1310 to 1522.
Historically, Rhodes was famous for the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.
The island has been known as Ρόδος in Greek throughout its history. Similar-sounding ῥόδον in ancient Greek was the word for the rose, whilst in modern Greek the also similar-sounding ρόδι or ρόιδο refers to the pomegranate. It was also called Lindos. In addition, the island has been called Rodi in Italian, Rodos in Turkish, and רודי or רודיס in Ladino.
Other ancient names were Ρόδη, Τελχινίς and Ηλιάς.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville incorrectly reports that Rhodes was formerly called "Collosus", through a conflation of the Colossus of Rhodes and Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, which refers to Colossae.
The island's name might be derived from erod, Phoenician for snake, since the island was home to many snakes in antiquity.
The island was inhabited in the Neolithic period although little remains of this culture.
In the 16th century BC, the Minoans came to Rhodes. Later Greek mythology recalled a Rhodian race called the Telchines and associated the island of Rhodes with Danaus; it was sometimes nicknamed Telchinis.
In the 15th century BC, Mycenaean Greeks invaded. After the Bronze Age collapse, the first renewed outside contacts were with Cyprus.
In Greek legend, Rhodes was claimed to have participated in the Trojan War under the leadership of Tlepolemus.
In the 8th century BC, the island's settlements started to form, with the coming of the Dorians, who built the three important cities of Lindus, Ialysus and Camirus, which together with Kos, Cnidus and Halicarnassus made up the so-called Dorian Hexapolis.
In Pindar's ode, the island was said to be born of the union of Helios the sun god and the nymph Rhodos, and the cities were named for their three sons. The rhoda is a pink hibiscus, native to the island. Diodorus Siculus added that Actis, one of the sons of Helios and Rhode, travelled to Egypt. He built the city of Heliopolis and taught the Egyptians astrology.
In the second half of the 8th century BC, the sanctuary of Athena received votive gifts that are markers for cultural contacts: small ivories from the Near East and bronze objects from Syria. At Kameiros on the northwest coast, a former Bronze Age site, where the temple was founded in the 8th century BC, there is another notable contemporaneous sequence of carved ivory figurines. The cemeteries of Kameiros and Ialyssos yielded several exquisite exemplars of the Orientalizing Rhodian jewelry, dated in the 7th and early 6th centuries BC.
The Persians invaded and overran the island, but they were in turn defeated by forces from Athens in 478 BC. The Rhodian cities joined the Athenian League. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes remained largely neutral, although it remained a member of the League. The war lasted until 404 BC, but by this time Rhodes had withdrawn entirely from the conflict and decided to go their own way.
Being the eastern gate to the Aegean Sea, Rhodes was an important stopping point for Phoenician merchants, and prosperous trading colonies and Phoenician communities emerged there, some within the Greek cities.
In 408 BC, the cities united to form one territory. They built the city of Rhodes, a new capital on the northern end of the island. Its regular plan was, according to Strabo, superintended by the Athenian architect Hippodamus.
In 357 BC, the island was conquered by the king Mausolus of Caria; then it fell again to the Persians in 340 BC. Their rule was also short.
Rhodes then became a part of the growing empire of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, after he defeated the Persians.
Following the death of Alexander, his generals vied for control of the kingdom. Three — Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus — succeeded in dividing the kingdom among themselves. Rhodes formed strong commercial and cultural ties with the Ptolemies in Alexandria, and together formed the Rhodo-Egyptian alliance that controlled trade throughout the Aegean in the 3rd century BC.
The city developed into a maritime, commercial and cultural center; its coins circulated nearly everywhere in the Mediterranean. Its famous schools of philosophy, science, literature and rhetoric shared masters with Alexandria: the Athenian rhetorician Aeschines, who formed a school at Rhodes; Apollonius of Rhodes, who wrote about Jason and Medea in the Argonautica; the observations and works of the astronomers Hipparchus and Geminus; and the rhetorician Dionysius Thrax. Its school of sculptors developed, under Pergamese influence, a rich, dramatic style that can be characterized as "Hellenistic Baroque". Agesander of Rhodes, with two other Rhodian sculptors, carved the famous Laocoön group, now in the Vatican Museums, and the large sculptures rediscovered at Sperlonga in the villa of Tiberius, probably in the early Imperial period.
In 305 BC, Antigonus directed his son, Demetrius, to besiege Rhodes in an attempt to break its alliance with Egypt. Demetrius created huge siege engines, including a 180 ft battering ram and a siege tower called Helepolis that weighed 360,000 lb. Despite this engagement, in 304 BC after only one year, he relented and signed a peace agreement, leaving behind a huge store of military equipment. The Rhodians sold the equipment and used the money to erect a statue of their sun god, Helios, the statue since called the Colossus of Rhodes. The Rhodians celebrated in honour of Helios a grand festival, the Halieia.
Throughout the 3rd century BC, Rhodes attempted to secure its independence and commerce, particularly its virtual control over the grain trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Both of these goals depended on none of the three great Hellenistic states achieving dominance. Consequently, the Rhodians pursued a policy of maintaining a balance of power among the Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies, even if that meant going to war with its traditional ally, Egypt. To this end, they employed their economy and their excellent navy as leverage, which was manned by proverbially the finest sailors in the Mediterranean world: “If we have ten Rhodians, we have ten ships.”
The Rhodians also established their dominance on the shores of Caria across from their island, which became known as the "Rhodian Peraia". It extended roughly from the modern city of Muğla in the north and Kaunos bordering Lycia in the south, near the present-day Dalyan, Turkey.
Rhodes successfully carried on this policy through the course of the third century BC, an impressive achievement for what was essentially a democratic state. By the end of that period, however, the balance of power was crumbling, as declining Ptolemaic power made Egypt an attractive target for Seleucid ambitions. In 203/2 BC the young and dynamic kings of Antigonid Macedon and Seleucid Asia, Philip V and Antiochus III, agreed to accept—at least temporarily—their respective military ambitions: Philip's campaign in the Aegean and western Anatolia and Antiochus' plan for Egypt. Heading a coalition of small states, the Rhodians checked Philip's navy, but not his superior army. Without a third power to which to turn, the Rhodians appealed in 201 BC to the Roman Republic.
Despite being exhausted by the Second Punic War against Hannibal the Romans agreed to intervene, still angry over the Macedonian alliance with Carthage that had led to the First Macedonian War from 214 to 205 BC. The Senate saw the appeal from Rhodes and her allies as the opportunity to pressure Philip. The result was the Second Macedonian War, which Rome won and greatly reduced Macedon's power, prestige, and territory. Rhodian independence was preserved. Rhodian influence in the Aegean was cemented through the organization of the Cyclades into the Second Nesiotic League under Rhodian leadership.
The Romans withdrew from Greece after the end of the conflict, but the resulting power vacuum quickly drew in Antiochus III and subsequently the Romans. The Roman–Seleucid War lasted from 192 to 188 BC with Rome, Rhodes, Pergamon, and other Roman-allied Greek states defeated the Seleucids and their allies, the last Mediterranean power that might even vaguely threaten Roman dominance. Having provided Rome with valuable naval help in her first foray into Asia, the Rhodians were rewarded with territory and enhanced status by the Treaty of Apamea. The Romans once again evacuated the east – the Senate preferred clients to provinces – but it was clear that Rome now ruled the Mediterranean and Rhodian autonomy was ultimately dependent upon good relations with them.
Those good graces soon evaporated in the wake of the Third Macedonian War. In 169 BC, during the war against Perseus, Rhodes sent Agepolis as ambassador to the consul Quintus Marcius Philippus, and then to Rome in the following year, hoping to turn the Senate against the war.
Rhodes remained scrupulously neutral during the war, but in the view of hostile elements in the Senate she had been a bit too friendly with the defeated King Perseus. Some actually proposed declaring war on the island republic, but this was averted. In 164 BC, Rhodes became a "permanent ally" of Rome, which was essentially a reduction to client state of nominal but meaningless independence. It was said that the Romans ultimately turned against the Rhodians because the islanders were the only people they had encountered who were more arrogant than themselves.
After surrendering its independence, Rhodes became a cultural and educational center for Roman noble families. It was especially noted for its teachers of rhetoric, such as Hermagoras and the unknown author of Rhetorica ad Herennium. At first, the state was an important ally of Rome and enjoyed numerous privileges, but these were later lost in various machinations of Roman politics. Cassius eventually invaded the island and sacked the city. In the early Imperial period Rhodes became a favorite place for political exiles.
In the 1st century AD, the Emperor Tiberius spent a brief term of exile on Rhodes. By tradition, Paul the Apostle evangelized and helped establish an early Christian church on the island during the first century.
In ancient times there was a Roman saying: "Hic Rhodus, hic salta!"—"Here is Rhodes, jump here!", an admonition to prove one's idle boasts by deed, rather than boastful talk. It comes from an Aesop's fable called "The Boasting Traveller" and was cited by Hegel, Marx, and Kierkegaard.
In 395 with the division of the Roman Empire, the long Byzantine period began for Rhodes. In Late Antiquity, the island was the capital of the Roman province of the Islands, headed by a praeses, and encompassing most of the Aegean islands, with twenty cities. Correspondingly, the island was also the metropolis of the ecclesiastical province of Cyclades, with eleven suffragan sees.
Beginning from ca. 600 AD, its influence in maritime issues was manifested in the collection of maritime laws known as "Rhodian Sea Law", accepted throughout the Mediterranean and in use throughout Byzantine times. In 622/3, during the climactic Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, Rhodes was captured by the Sasanian navy.
Rhodes was occupied by the Islamic Umayyad forces of Caliph Muawiyah I in 654, who carried off the remains of the Colossus of Rhodes. The island was again captured by the Arabs in 673 as part of their first attack on Constantinople. When their fleet was destroyed by Greek fire before Constantinople and by storms on its return trip, however, the Umayyads evacuated their troops in 679/80 as part of the Byzantine–Umayyad peace treaty. In 715 the Byzantine fleet dispatched against the Arabs launched a rebellion at Rhodes, which led to the installation of Theodosios III on the Byzantine throne.
From the early 8th to the 12th centuries, Rhodes belonged to the Cibyrrhaeot Theme of the Byzantine Empire, and was a centre for shipbuilding and commerce. In c. 1090, it was occupied by the forces of the Seljuk Turks, after the long period of chaos resulting from the Battle of Manzikert. Rhodes was recaptured by the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos during the First Crusade.
As Byzantine central power weakened under the Angeloi emperors, in the first half of the 13th century, Rhodes became the centre of an independent domain under Leo Gabalas and his brother John, until it was occupied by the Genoese in 1248–1250. The Genoese were evicted by the Empire of Nicaea, after which the island became a regular province of the Nicaean state. In 1305, the island was given as a fief to Andrea Morisco, a Genoese adventurer who had entered Byzantine service.
In 1306–1310, the Byzantine era of the island's history came to an end when the island was occupied by the Knights Hospitaller. Under the rule of the newly named "Knights of Rhodes", the city was rebuilt into a model of the European medieval ideal. Many of the city's famous monuments, including the Palace of the Grand Master, were built during this period.
The walls had been strengthened by the Knights through hiring Italian engineers that used knowledge of ballistics to design defences against gunpowder attacks, and which withstood the attacks of the Sultan of Egypt in 1444, and a siege by the Ottomans under Mehmed II in 1480. Eventually, however, Rhodes fell to the large army of Suleiman the Magnificent in December 1522. The Sultan deployed 400 ships delivering 100,000 men to the island. Against this force the Knights, under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, had about 7,000 men-at-arms, with an English, Spanish, French, and Italian contingent each defending separate areas and their fortifications. The siege lasted six months, at the end of which the surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to the Kingdom of Sicily. Despite the defeat, both Christians and Muslims seem to have regarded the conduct of Villiers de L'Isle-Adam as extremely valiant, and the Grand Master was proclaimed a Defender of the Faith by Pope Adrian VI. The knights would later move their base of operations to Malta and Gozo.
Rhodes was thereafter a possession of the Ottoman Empire for nearly four centuries.
In the 19th century the island was populated by ethnic groups from the surrounding nations, including Jews, whose presence goes back 2,300 years. Under Ottoman rule, they generally did fairly well, but discrimination and bigotry occasionally arose. In February 1840, the Jews of Rhodes were falsely accused by the Greek Orthodox community of ritually murdering a Christian boy. This became known as the Rhodes blood libel.
Austria opened a post-office at RHODUS before 1864, as witnessed by stamps with Franz Joseph's head.
In 1912, Italy seized Rhodes from the Ottomans during the Italo-Turkish War. Being under Italian administration, the island's population was thus spared the "exchange of the minorities" between Greece and Turkey. Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese Islands were assigned to Italy in the Treaty of Ouchy. Although the treaty stipulated that the islands were to be returned to Turkey, the advent of World War I prevented this from happening. Turkey ceded them officially to Italy with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. It then became the core of their possession of the Isole Italiane dell'Egeo.
Thousands of Italian colonists settled in the island, mainly in the capital "Rodi", while some of them founded farm villages, "San Marco" and "Savona": in 1940 the creation of the "Provincia italiana di Rodi" in the Dodecanese islands was officially proposed. In the late 1930s, Mussolini embarked on a program of Italianization, attempting to make the island of Rhodes a transportation hub that would facilitate the spread of Italian culture in Greece and the Levant. The Fascist program coincided with improvements to infrastructure, building imposing buildings such as the Hotel Rodon, the Puccini Theater and many administrative buildings with master architects such as Armando Bernabiti and Florestano Di Fausto. While the government worked at modernization, they also obliterated many historical buildings that did not match their ideal of a modern society.
The island suffered through many "governors" appointed by the Italian government. As such, in 1938, the "Leggi razziali" were passed, mimicking the footsteps of the antisemitic policies promoted in other European countries. All Jews who served in the government, including the military, were forced to resign, school children were forced to abandon their studies, and all commerce that included any dealings with Jews was forbidden.
Following the Italian Armistice of 8 September 1943, the British attempted to get the Italian garrison on Rhodes to change sides. This was anticipated by the German Army, which succeeded in occupying the island with the Battle of Rhodes. In great measure, the German occupation caused the British failure in the subsequent Dodecanese Campaign.
After September 1943, the Jews were sent to concentration camps. However, the Turkish Consul Selahattin Ülkümen succeeded, at considerable risk to himself and his family, in saving 42 Jewish families, about 200 persons in total, who had Turkish citizenship or were members of Turkish citizens' families.
On 8 May 1945, the Germans under Otto Wagener surrendered Rhodes as well as the Dodecanese as a whole to the British, who soon after then occupied the islands as a military protectorate.
At the Paris Peace Treaties, Rhodes, together with the other islands of the Dodecanese, was united with Greece in February 1947. 6,000 Italian colonists were forced to abandon the island and returned to Italy.
In 1949, Rhodes was the venue for negotiations between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, concluding with the 1949 Armistice Agreements.
In 2023, the island was hit by the 2023 Greece wildfires, which forced the largest evacuations in the history of Greece. Nearly 19,000 people had to evacuate.
The island of Rhodes is shaped like a spearhead, 79.7 km long and 38 km across at its widest, with a total area of approximately 1,400 km2 and a coastline of approximately 220 km. Limestone is the main bedrock. The city of Rhodes is located at the northern tip of the island, as well as the site of the ancient and modern commercial harbours. The main airport is the Diagoras International Airport, located 14 km to the southwest of the city in Paradisi. The road network radiates from the city along the east and west coasts.
Outside the city of Rhodes, the island is dotted with small villages of whitewashed homes and spa resorts, among them Faliraki, Lindos, Kremasti, Haraki, Pefkos, Archangelos, Afantou, Koskinou, Embona, Paradisi, and Trianta.
Rhodes is situated 363 km east-southeast from the Greek mainland, and 18 km from the southern shore of Turkey. Mount Attavyros, at 1,216 m, is the island's highest point of elevation.
The interior of the island is mountainous, sparsely inhabited and covered with forests of pine and cypress. While the shores are rocky, the island has arable strips of land where citrus fruit, wine grapes, vegetables, olives and other crops are grown. Many flowering plants for which the island is named are abundant.
The Rhodian population of fallow deer was found to be genetically distinct in 2005, and to be of urgent conservation concern. In Petaloudes Valley, large numbers of tiger moths gather during the summer months.
Earthquakes include the 226 BC earthquake that destroyed the Colossus of Rhodes; one on 3 May 1481 which destroyed much of the city of Rhodes; and one on 26 June 1926.
On 15 July 2008, Rhodes was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, causing minor damage to a few old buildings and one death.
Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate with mild winters and hot summers. The South East of the island experiences a significantly warmer climate with Lindos registering a mean annual temperature of around 22.0 °C, making it the warmest area in Greece. Moreover, according to the Hellenic National Meteorological Service, South East Rhodes records the highest mean annual sunshine in Greece with over 3,100 hours.
The Colossus of Rhodes was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This giant bronze statue was documented as once standing at the harbour. It was completed in 280 BC and destroyed in an earthquake in 226 BC. No trace of the statue remains today.
Historical sites on the island of Rhodes include the Acropolis of Lindos, the Acropolis of Rhodes with the Temple of Pythian Apollo and an ancient theatre and stadium, ancient Ialysos, ancient Kamiros, the Governor's Palace, Rhodes Old Town, the Palace of the Grand Masters, Kahal Shalom Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter, the Archaeological Museum, the ruins of the castle of Monolithos, the castle of Kritinia, St. Catherine Hospice and Rhodes Footbridge.
The predominant religion of Rhodes is Greek Orthodox; the island is the seat of the Metropolis of Rhodes.
There is a Latin Catholic minority on the island of 2,000, many of whom are descendants of Italians who remained after the end of the Italian occupation, pastorally served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Rhodes.
Rhodes has a Turkish Muslim minority, which includes Greek Muslims whose ancestors from Crete and the Dodecanese converted to Islam in the Ottoman period. Although a remnant from Ottoman Turkish times they were not required in the population exchange of 1923–24 to resettle in Turkey like the Turkish, Greek, and other Muslim communities living mainly in Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece because unlike these areas the Dodecanese Islands were under Italian administration at the time. They are organized around the Turkish Association of Rhodes, which gives the figure 3,500 for the population they bring together and represent for the island. The number of the Turks in Rhodes could be as many as 4,000.
The Jewish community of Rhodes goes back 2,300 years. Kahal Shalom Synagogue, established in 1557, during the Ottoman era, is the oldest synagogue in Greece and still stands in the Jewish quarter of the old town of Rhodes. At its peak in the 1920s, the Jewish community was one-third of the town's total population. In the 1940s, there were about 2000 Jews of various ethnic backgrounds. The Nazis deported and killed most of the community during the Holocaust. Kahal Shalom has been renovated with the help of foreign donors but few Jews live year-round in Rhodes today, so services are not held on a regular basis.
The Jewish Museum of Rhodes was established in 1997 to preserve the Jewish history and culture of the Jews of Rhodes. It is adjacent to the Kahal Shalom Synagogue.
The Congolese businessman and politician, and former governor of Katanga, Moïse Katumbi's father, Nissim Soriano was a Greek Sephardic Jew, who fled Rhodes in 1938, who settled in Katanga, in the Congo, a Belgian colony at the time
The present municipality Rhodes was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 10 former municipalities, that became municipal units:
The municipality has an area of 1400.681 km2. It covers the island of Rhodes and a few uninhabited offshore islets. Rhodes city was the capital of the former Dodecanese Prefecture. Rhodes is the most populated island of the South Aegean Region.
Rhodes has 43 towns and villages:
The economy is tourist-oriented, and the most developed sector is service. Tourism has elevated Rhodes economically, compared to the rest of Greece.
Small industries process imported raw materials for local retail, though other industry includes agricultural goods production, stockbreeding, fishery and winery.
Rhodes has two airports, but only one is public. Diagoras Airport, southwest of Rhodes City, is the fourth biggest by passenger volume in Greece, and the main entrance/exit point to the island for both locals and tourists. The island is well connected with other major Greek cities and islands as well as with major European capitals and cities via charter flights. Until 1977, Rhodes Maritsa Airport, built in 1938, was a public airport; it is now used by the Hellenic Air Force and occasionally for car races.
There are also two inoperative airfields. Kalathos Airfield, north of Lindos, and Kattavia Airstrip, to the south of the island, were built by the Italians during the Second World War. Neither remains operational.
Two pilot schools offer aviation services.
Rhodes has five ports, three of them in Rhodes City, one in the west coast near Kamiros and one in east coast near Lardos.
The road network of the island is mostly paved and consists of 3 national roads plus one planned, 40 provincial and numerous local. These are the four major island arteries:
Future roads:
Bus services are handled by two operators:
Families in Rhodes often own more than one car, along with a motorbike. Traffic jams are common particularly in the summer months as vehicles more than double while parking spots downtown and around the old town are limited and can't cope with demand. Moreover, the island is served by 450 taxis and some 200 public and private buses adding to the traffic burden.
Rhodian tradition in cuisine is rich. Koriantolino and Souma are the main alcoholic drinks of Rhodes. Local foods include:
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Rhodes is one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Greece. After Crete, the island is the most visited destination in Greece, with arrivals standing at 1,785,305 in 2013. In 2014 they stood at 1,931,005, while in 2015 the arrival number reduced slightly and stood at 1,901,000. The average length of stay is estimated at 8 days. Guests from Great Britain, Israel, France, Italy, Sweden and Norway are the ones that constitute the biggest portion in terms of the arrivals by country. In Rhodes, the supply of available rooms is high, since more than 550 hotels are operating in the island, the majority of which are two star hotels
Map of Rhodes with accommodations
The blue markers shows the location of various accommodations in Rhodes. The letter in the marker describes the accommodation types: H for Hotel, A for Apartment, R for Resort, B for Bed & Breakfast and O for Other (e.g. pension, villa). Click on the blue marker for more information on the accommodation.
