Day Trips from Rhodes

Day trips from Rhodes start in Rhodes town and reach Lindos, Symi, Kastellorizo and Marmaris across the strait, or stay on the island for the medieval town, the coast and the interior. The page is part of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville.

This page covers what day trips from Rhodes are, Lindos, Symi, Marmaris and Kastellorizo, the medieval town, the trips by sea and the inland trips by jeep or quad. Common questions come last. Each section links to the Greece Ville posts on single tours.

What are day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes are single-day outings that start in Rhodes town, on the northern tip of the island, and reach Lindos, Symi, Kastellorizo and the Turkish coast by road or by sea, using the harbour that has served the Dodecanese for centuries.

The town stands at the northern tip of the island and holds both the ancient and the modern commercial harbours. Day trips from Rhodes therefore begin on water that Rhodian traders used for centuries, and every route below leaves from this one base.

Mandraki lies at the centre of the town. Twentieth-century Italian planners laid out a new quarter in the zone of the Mandraki and built the Puccini Theater among other imposing buildings, so the harbour front joins ancient, medieval and Italian layers.

The Turkish coast faces the island across the water. In the third century BC, Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt formed the Rhodo-Egyptian alliance, which controlled trade throughout the Aegean, and the town has served as a crossing point between shores ever since.

Roads leave the town in three main directions. Three of the island’s five main avenues start in the city, and Rhodes-Lindos Avenue is one of them, so day trips from Rhodes by road to the east coast follow it.

• Faliraki: Rhodes-Kallithea Avenue links the town with Faliraki on the east coast.
• Lindos: Rhodes-Lindos Avenue links the town with the village below the acropolis.
• Saying: A Roman saying, Here is Rhodes, jump here, tells a boaster to prove a claim by deed.
• Sculpture: Rhodian sculptors developed a rich, dramatic style called Hellenistic Baroque.

The sections below take each of the day trips from Rhodes in turn, from the acropolis village of Lindos and the islands of Symi and Kastellorizo to Marmaris, the medieval town, the sea and the inland hills.

Why does Lindos feature among day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes reach Lindos on the east coast, where an acropolis village keeps the site of the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, a cult place that drew offerings from rulers, sculptors and painters across the ancient Greek world.

Tradition holds that gold rained on Rhodes at the moment Athena was born from the head of Zeus. The sanctuary of Athena Lindia, set on the acropolis of Lindos, is bound up with that story of the island.

The cult of Athena on Rhodes differed from the cult elsewhere in Greece, because it required the burning of entrails from sacrificial animals on the altar. Philostratus the Elder described the cult at this sanctuary in the third century.

The Temple Chronicle recorded the votive gifts of the sanctuary, among them works of Boethus and of the painter Parrhasios of Ephesus. Such records show why day trips from Rhodes to Lindos concern art as well as stone.

The village below has produced notable people, among them Patriarch Joannicius II of Constantinople and the politician and economist Ioannis Zigdis. The Lindos tour post covers the acropolis, the village and the nearby coast.

• Myth: In the story told by Pindar, a cloud of gold rained down on Rhodes for the Rhodians.
• Rite: The altar fire consumed the entrails of the sacrificial animals, which set the Rhodian rite apart.
• Image: Callimachus wrote that the early cult image was a wooden xoanon that was later replaced by a statue.
• Digs: Italian archaeologists Maiuri and Jacopi excavated the sanctuary, and Danish archaeologists followed them.

These finds explain the weight of the site. Day trips from Rhodes to Lindos meet a sanctuary whose rites and offerings were recorded by ancient writers and later uncovered by excavation.

What do day trips from Rhodes show on Symi?

Day trips from Rhodes cross to Symi, a mountainous island of the Dodecanese whose harbour town and upper town belong to the Rhodes regional unit, and whose name carries a long trail of explanations from myth and from ancient writers.

Pliny the Elder claimed that the name of the island came from simia, the Latin word for a monkey. Greek myth gives another origin, in which the island takes its name from the nymph Syme.

The municipality includes seven uninhabited offshore islets, so the island forms a small group of its own. Its townships include Pedi, Nimborio, Marathounda and Panormitis, where a monastery draws pilgrims from across Greece.

The Historical Museum of Symi shows finds gathered by the antiquarians Michael and Niketas Chaviaras, sons of the local historian Demosthenes Chaviaras. The family archive was donated to the museum in the 1980s.

The Symi day trip from Rhodes post covers the crossing, the harbour of Gialos and the sponge and shipbuilding past. Day trips from Rhodes to Symi also touch twentieth-century history.

• Names: In antiquity the island was known as Aigli and Metapontis.
• Surrender: At the end of the Second World War, German forces in the region surrendered on Symi to the British.
• Union: Symi became part of Greece in 1948, after three years of British occupation.
• Festival: The Symi Festival has run since 1995 from July to September.

These facts show why day trips from Rhodes to Symi join a harbour town to a long record of seafaring, ancient writing and modern events.

Why cross to Marmaris on day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes include Marmaris, a port resort on the Turkish Riviera, where a rebuilt Ottoman castle, a recently found ancient tomb and a bay ringed by mountains sit across the water from the island of Rhodes.

Marmaris stands on the Turkish Riviera, a stretch of southwest Turkey also called the Turquoise Coast. The riviera extends along about 1,000 km of shoreline between the Mediterranean and the Aegean.

Tradition holds that volcanic hills near Dalyan inspired the Chimera, the fire-breathing monster that Bellerophon slew in Greek myth. The same coast also holds the home town of Herodotus, at Bodrum.

Archaeologists found the pyramid-shaped tomb of the ancient Greek boxer Diagoras near the town in 2018. Locals had held the structure to be a saint’s grave, and the tomb was looted once that belief ended.

The Rhodes to Marmaris day trip post covers the crossing and the town on the Turkish side. The Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey is also listed among the sports events of the district.

• Boxer: The tomb of Diagoras is about 2300 years old.
• Inscription: A Greek inscription promises vigilance at the very top so that no coward can destroy the grave.
• Regatta: Every year in late October the town hosts a regatta for boats and crews from home and abroad.
• Tulip: The peninsula is the westernmost habitat of the tulip Tulipa armena, a flower of high eastern ground.

In the sixth century BC the site was known as Physkos, in a part of Caria that belonged to Rhodes. Day trips from Rhodes to Marmaris therefore retrace an old link.

What do day trips from Rhodes find on Kastellorizo?

Day trips from Rhodes extend east to Kastellorizo, the smallest island of the Dodecanese, where one harbour town, a castle of the Knights and a famous sea cave fill an island that lies close to the Turkish shore.

The only town sits around a wide bay and shows slender houses with wooden balconies in the Anatolian style. A former Ottoman mosque beside the harbour was restored and has served as a museum since 2007.

The Blue Cave, which the islanders call Phokiali, a name that means seal’s refuge, lies on the southeast coast. Its entrance rises barely one metre above the sea, so boats enter only in calm conditions.

The Ottoman census of the 1880s counted 4,635 Greeks among the people of the district of Kastellorizo. The guitarist David Gilmour stayed on the island in the early 1990s and later named an instrumental piece after it.

The Kastellorizo day trip post covers the island and its harbour from the Turkish side. Day trips from Rhodes to the island instead follow the old link of rule from Rhodes.

• Overseer: In the Hellenistic period Rhodes sent an overseer, called an epistates, to monitor events on the island.
• Quay: The western quay of Pera Meria faces the monasteries of Profitis Ilias and Aghia Triadha.
• Custom: On the day before the feast of Agios Elias, children and then men jump into the sea.
• Patriot: The Lady of Ro is listed among the notable people of the municipality.

Day trips from Rhodes to Kastellorizo thus meet a small island with a Rhodian past, a mixed Ottoman and Italian record and a coast shaped by limestone.

What does the medieval town add to day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes need not leave the island to cross centuries, because the medieval town, built mainly from 1309 to 1523 by the Knights Hospitaller, stands inside a long wall and holds a palace, mosques and an old Jewish quarter.

The medieval town splits into a northern high town and a lower town lying south-southwest of it. The high town was built in full by the Hospitallers, and the Palace of the Grand Master is among the monuments of their period.

The list of main sights also names the Mehmet Aga Mosque, the church of Panagia tou Kastrou and the Kahal Shalom Synagogue. Day trips from Rhodes within the walls therefore pass Gothic, Ottoman and Jewish buildings.

After September 1943 the Jews of Rhodes were sent to concentration camps. The Turkish consul Selahattin Ülkümen saved 42 Jewish families, about 200 persons, at considerable risk to himself and his family.

The Rhodes Old Town tour post covers the walls, the palace and the Street of the Knights, while the Rhodes food tour post covers the dishes and markets of the same streets.

• Gate: In 1522 Suleiman entered the city through the gate of St. Anastasius.
• Domes: The inner portico of the Suleymaniye Mosque is covered by seven domes on eight columns.
• Hospices: Mosques of that early Ottoman type were adjoined by tabhanes, which were hospices for Sufis.
• Library: The Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library is a named example of Ottoman architecture in the town.

The town shows how Byzantine, Hospitaller, Ottoman and Italian rulers each altered the same streets. Day trips from Rhodes inside the walls follow that layered record.

Which sea routes belong among day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes by sea use the harbours of Rhodes town for boat trips, catamaran cruises and sunset cruises, and the long record of Rhodian shipping, from Hellenistic fleets to Byzantine shipyards, explains why the sea shapes every route.

The Rhodes boat trip post covers departures from the harbours of the town and the coves along the coast. Day trips from Rhodes by boat follow waters that Rhodian ships sailed in antiquity.

In the third century BC the Rhodians kept a balance of power among the Antigonid, Seleucid and Ptolemaic states. They used their economy and their navy as leverage, and the policy held through the third century.

The Rhodes catamaran cruise post covers sailing on two hulls around the coast. From the eighth to the twelfth century, Rhodes belonged to the Cibyrrhaeot Theme of the Byzantine Empire as a centre of shipbuilding.

The Rhodes sunset cruise post covers evening departures along the north coast. The Rhodians honoured the sun god Helios with a grand festival, the Halieia, and the island is nicknamed the Island of the Sun.

• Helepolis: Demetrios left a huge siege tower, the Helepolis, behind in 304 BC.
• League: Rhodes organised the Cyclades into the Second Nesiotic League under Rhodian leadership.
• Gabalas: Leo Gabalas and his brother John ruled an independent domain on the island in the thirteenth century.
• Genoese: The Genoese held the island from 1248 to 1250 before the Empire of Nicaea evicted them.

Every sea route among the day trips from Rhodes thus rests on a long record of fleets, leagues and harbours that shaped Aegean trade.

How do jeep and quad trips fit among day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes inland by jeep or quad climb into pine hills, limestone ridges and old villages, giving a second route that leaves the coast and meets the geology, the wildlife and the twentieth-century settlements of the island.

The Rhodes jeep safari post covers tracks across the west coast and the mountain villages. Day trips from Rhodes by jeep reach ground that the coastal roads do not touch.

The Rhodes ATV tour post covers quad bike rides on forest tracks. Mount Profitis Ilias rises to 798 metres and is formed of uplifted fault blocks of limestone from the Pindos-Olonos series.

The Rhodes shore excursion post covers the options for cruise passengers who arrive at the port. The ophiolites of the mountain include gabbro, and the forest holds a fallow deer, Dama dama platoni.

The Italian administration built four agricultural villages on Rhodes, and each settler received a house and a plot of land. Eleousa, founded on the mountain in 1935 and 1936, was one of them.

• Origin: The mountain comes from uplifted fault blocks produced by the Hellenide orogeny.
• Rock: The ophiolites on the slopes include gabbro.
• Deer: The deer Dama dama platoni lives in the woods near the summit.
• Settlers: The settlers of Eleousa came from Trentino-Alto Adige in northern Italy.

Jeep and quad routes complete the day trips from Rhodes by adding the interior to the harbours and the sea.

What do travellers ask about day trips from Rhodes?

Day trips from Rhodes answer common questions about islands, the Turkish coast, history and seasons, and the replies below give plain facts about each of those topics for travellers who plan a single day out from Rhodes town.

Which islands and coasts do day trips from Rhodes reach by sea?

Day trips from Rhodes by sea reach Symi, Kastellorizo and Marmaris. Ferries operate from Marmaris to Rhodes and Symi, and Kastellorizo is connected with Rhodes, Piraeus and the Turkish town of Kas by ferry. Cruise boats from Mandraki also run to the east coast.

Which parts of the island do road day trips from Rhodes cover?

Road day trips from Rhodes start from the avenues that leave the town. Rhodes-Lindos Avenue serves the east coast, Rhodes-Kallithea Avenue serves Faliraki and Rhodes-Kamiros Avenue serves the west coast, where the airport and ancient Kamiros lie. Mountain tracks reach inland villages.

Which periods of history do day trips from Rhodes cover?

Day trips from Rhodes cover a range of periods in one place. The Knights Hospitaller held the island from 1309 until 1 January 1523, when they left. Italy took the island in 1912, and the Dodecanese passed to Greece in 1948 after the Paris Peace Treaties.

Which seasons suit day trips from Rhodes?

Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate with mild winters. The town records an average annual temperature of 20.9 degrees Celsius. Marmaris is very unlikely to see rain between the fifth month and October, and Kastellorizo has exceptionally mild winters by European standards.