A Rhodes old town tour is a walk through the walled medieval town of Rhodes. The trip is one of the Greece Tours on Greece Ville, listed with the other Rhodes tours and day trips from Rhodes.
This post covers the island in numbers, the name of Rhodes, earthquakes, the 1856 explosion, the ancient city plan, astronomers, Roman students, sculptors, stamped jar handles, where the Knights went, the first siege, the weather, union with Greece and common questions. The sections below cover history, science, weather and the practical questions that visitors ask.
What is a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set on Rhodes, the biggest Dodecanese island. Rhodes has a larger area than all the other Dodecanese islands put together. It lies about 460 kilometres south-east of Athens. It also lies about 380 kilometres west of Cyprus.
During a Rhodes old town tour, the wider region matters. The former Dodecanese Prefecture, an old government area, covered 2,714 square kilometres. Before the 2011 reform, it had 25 municipalities and 2 communities.
After Rhodes, the next biggest Dodecanese islands are Karpathos, at 300 square kilometres, and Kos, at 290.3. Every Greek island smaller than Rhodes is no more than two-thirds of its size.
On a Rhodes old town tour, people matter too. Only Crete and Euboea have more residents than Rhodes among all the Greek islands. Greater Rhodes, the area around Rhodes town, holds nearly 90,000 people.
The city of Rhodes had 33,100 residents in 1971 and 41,425 in 1981. It had 43,558 residents in 1991 and 53,709 in 2001. The 2011 census found 49,541 people, fewer than in 2001.
- Archangelos: This local government area has 115.375 square kilometres of land and held 7,786 residents in 2021.
- Kameiros: This local government area has a total land area of 211.825 square kilometres.
- Ialysos: This suburb of Rhodes town reached 10,107 residents in 2001 and had 12,717 residents in 2021.
The local government area of Rhodes city covers 19.481 square kilometres. The Petaloudes local government area covers 89.2 square kilometres in total.
Where does the name on a Rhodes old town tour come from?
A Rhodes old town tour takes place on an island whose name has a long story. Diodorus says the island took its name from Rhodos, daughter of Poseidon and Halia. Other writers also recorded older names of the island, such as Ophiussa.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the island’s name has a deep past. Strabo wrote that Rhodes was once called Ophiussa and Stadia, then Telchinis. Telchinis was named after the Telchines, who lived there.
Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer, lists old names of Rhodes, such as Asteria, Aethria and Trinacria. Pliny says the old name Atabyria came from the name of one of the island’s kings.
On a Rhodes old town tour, myth says the Telchines were the first people on Rhodes. Diodorus says the Telchines helped raise the baby Poseidon, whom the goddess Rhea left in their care.
Halia, a sister of the Telchines, has a Greek name meaning “dweller in the sea”. In myth, Halia threw herself into the sea and became the goddess Leucothea. The people of Rhodes honoured her.
- Serpents: A translation note says the name Ophiussa refers to the island’s great number of serpents.
- Rose coin: A silver coin of Rhodes shows a rose and bud on its back.
- Languages: In Italian the island is called Rodi, and in Turkish it is called Rodos.
Diodorus also gives a plain explanation: the island began soft like mud. The sun dried much of its wetness and filled it with life.
Which quakes shook the island of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour takes place on an island with a long record of strong quakes. Records name shocks between 226 BC and 2008. The 1481 main shock is estimated at magnitude 7.1, a number that rates a quake’s size.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the 1481 quakes form one story. A strong foreshock, a quake before the main one, came on 15 March 1481. Quakes kept rattling Rhodes until January 1482.
The 1481 main shock struck at 3:00 in the morning on the 3rd of the month after April. Its peak intensity, a scale of ground shaking, is estimated at IX to X.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the Palace of the Grand Master has its own quake story. The 1481 quake on Rhodes damaged the palace, and it was repaired soon afterwards.
Large aftershocks, which are quakes that come after a main shock, followed in 1481. They came on the 5th and 12th of the month after April, then 3 October and 18 December.
- 1303 quake: The quake of 8 August 1303, about magnitude 8, damaged Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
- 1741 quake: A magnitude 7.3 quake on 31 January 1741 sent a probable tsunami onto the Rhodes coast.
- 1948 quake: A magnitude 7.3 quake hit the Dodecanese island group on 9 February 1948, destroying 573 houses.
On 15 July 2008 a magnitude 6.4 quake struck near Kattavia, a place on Rhodes. It was 52 km deep, and one woman died.
What exploded at the Palace of the Grand Master near a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour takes place in a town where one church blew up. The blast happened on 6 November 1856. At least 200 people were killed. It was the main mosque of the town from 1522 until the blast.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the story includes the gunpowder that was kept in the church. It was possibly stored there since the siege of 1522, a long attack on a place.
One estimate puts the weight of the gunpowder at about 150 to 300 tonnes. An encyclopaedia of 1876, a reference book, reported 300 houses destroyed. It also reported more than 1000 people dead.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the rescue work after the blast is part of the story. Alfred Biliotti, a British consular official who served abroad, dug into the ruins to rescue survivors.
In 1853, Charles Newton wrote that the church had a wooden roof. He said it was painted blue and decorated with stars. Builders took marble floor slabs and other materials from the site.
- Size: The church was 48 to 50 metres long and 15 to 18 metres wide.
- School: A school was built over the ruins, using pieces of the destroyed church.
- Coins: A tomb found in 1988 held a hoard of 190 coins dated between 1488 and 1503.
The blast damaged houses near the church. Today only small parts of the northern and eastern foundations, the base of the walls, can be seen.
How did a planner lay out the city for a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour covers a city planned as a rough triangle. Its tip lay at the northern end of the island. The city ran about 3,000 m from north to south. The ancient wall followed the coast along two sides of the triangle.
For a Rhodes old town tour, the harbours lay on the east side of the city. A main harbour lay in the middle, a smaller one north and an open anchorage south-east.
The moles, or sea walls that break waves, are ancient and shelter the natural bays. A small harbour on the west coast, towards the north, has since filled up with mud and sand.
During a Rhodes old town tour, the land rises from the east harbours. It climbs in a theatre-like slope towards the south-west. The slope ends at a plateau about 90 m high.
Digs along old streets show a rectangular grid, lined up almost exactly north-south and east-west. Parts of the medieval street plan, including the Street of the Knights, follow ancient grid lines.
- Agora: The agora, the main square, is thought to have run west from the great harbour.
- Ship-sheds: Remains of ship-sheds, or houses for ships, lie near the smaller harbour in the north.
- Greenery: The orator, or public speaker, Aelius Aristides wrote of terraces and greenery in the upper town.
Ancient Rhodes had splendour but was not huge. The siege of Demetrius names no more than 6,000 citizens able to fight.
Which astronomers worked on the island of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set on an island with a long record of astronomy. Hipparchus, Posidonius and Geminus are three names linked to Rhodes. Ptolemy credits Hipparchus with observations from 147 to 127 BC, partly stated as made on Rhodes.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the north of the island matches one star record. Scholars suggest star data for Hipparchus’s Aratus commentary came from latitude 36°15′, the distance north of the equator.
Hipparchus listed about 850 stars in a catalogue, thought to be finished in 129 BC. He compared the star Spica with older records by Timocharis and Aristillus. He found Spica had moved 2 degrees.
On a Rhodes old town tour, an eclipse story fits the island. Historian Toomer links Pliny’s tale of an eclipsed Moon at sunrise to 26 November 139 BC. The eclipse was seen from Rhodes.
Posidonius used the star Canopus, which only touched the horizon at Rhodes but rose 7.5 degrees at Alexandria. He took Rhodes as 5,000 stadia, an old Greek unit of length, due north of Alexandria.
- Geminus of Rhodes: He wrote the Introduction to the Phenomena, a beginners’ astronomy book that still survives.
- Time of Geminus: Rhodes was the centre of astronomical research and the reference point for latitude.
- Earth size: Posidonius multiplied the 5,000 stadia by 48 to get 240,000 stadia round the Earth.
Ptolemy approved the Earth size result of Posidonius, and it stayed accepted for the next 1,500 years.
Which Romans studied rhetoric on the island of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set on an island where Romans studied rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of speaking well in public. Cicero, Julius Caesar and Tiberius all spent time on Rhodes. Cicero and Caesar even shared the same teacher, Molon.
On a Rhodes old town tour, it is worth knowing why the Roman Cicero came to the island. In 79 BC he left Rome for Greece, Asia Minor and Rhodes to sharpen his speaking.
Plutarch says Cicero studied public speaking on Rhodes with Apollonius Molon and philosophy with Posidonius. Molon helped Cicero tone down the excesses of his style and train his body and lungs for speaking.
Molon matters on a Rhodes old town tour. After hearing Cicero speak in Greek, Molon said he pitied Greece. He felt this because culture and eloquence were going to belong to the Romans too.
After Rhodes lost its independence, it became a centre of learning for noble Roman families. Molon told his pupils, quoting Demosthenes, that the first three parts of speaking are delivery, delivery and delivery.
- Caesar: Julius Caesar sailed to Rhodes to study under Molon, the same teacher Cicero had.
- Tiberius: Suetonius says Tiberius found Rhodes pleasant and healthy, and lived there in a modest house.
- Pirates: Suetonius says pirates held Caesar for nearly forty days, with only one doctor and two servants.
In 43 BC Cassius, one of Caesar’s killers, attacked and sacked Rhodes. Appian says Cassius was educated on Rhodes.
Which famous statues came from the sculptors of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set on the island that produced the sculptors of the Laocoön group. Pliny the Elder said three Rhodes sculptors made it: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. It shows a Trojan priest and his sons attacked by sea serpents.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the Laocoön group has a recorded past. Pliny wrote that it stood in Emperor Titus’s palace. It was unearthed in February 1506 in a vineyard in Rome.
Pope Julius II bought the group on 23 March. Michelangelo went to the dig with Giuliano da Sangallo. Sangallo at once named the find as the Laocoön that Pliny wrote about.
Away from a Rhodes old town tour, the Laocoön group stands in the Vatican Museums. It is just over 2 metres high. Pliny said the group was carved from a single block.
Road engineers found the Sperlonga sculptures in 1957, in the grounds of the former villa of Tiberius. The cave at Sperlonga held four main groups, among them the blinding of the giant Polyphemus.
- Scylla ship: A carved inscription on it names Athenodoros, Agesandros and Polydoros, the same three names Pliny gives.
- Farnese Bull: This Naples statue is the largest single sculpture yet recovered from ancient times, at 21.8 tonnes.
- Bull maker: Pliny credits the Rhodian brothers Apollonius and Tauriscus with what seems the first Farnese Bull.
Plenty of copies show the father’s arm stretched out. The copy in the Palace of the Grand Master in Rhodes has been corrected.
What did stamped jar handles tell about the trade of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set in a city whose stamped jar handles reveal trade. About 300,000 Greek jar stamps have been found, and about half are Rhodian. Stamps from Greek jars have turned up as far away as Afghanistan and India.
On a Rhodes old town tour, one detail sets the city apart from the rest. Of all Greek cities, only Rhodes added the month of production to certain stamps on its jar handles.
A Rhodian handle found at Barsinia in Jordan names two things. One is Peisistratos, the official of that year. The other is Diostheos, a Rhodian month. Both appear together on that one handle.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the people behind the stamps add a human side. Nine women are known among the makers named on Rhodian stamps, and they appear only on rectangular stamps.
Rhodian stamps calling a maker a slave by birth or a resident foreigner are almost always rectangular. The scholar Nathan Badoud argues that stamping Rhodian jars was a tax on making those jars.
- Kaunos in Caria: A catalogue of the stamps found there details 938, at least 84% of them Rhodian.
- Tanais on the Don: Of the 431 stamps found there between 1955 and 1960, 398 were Rhodian.
- Shipwreck: Of the 381 jars found on the Kyrenia wreck, 340 came from Rhodes.
A single Rhodian jar held 23 to 30 liters. In the mid-2nd century BC, the common one held 28 to well over 29 liters.
Where did the Knights go after leaving the town of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour leads to one question: where did the Knights go? After Rhodes, they stopped at Candia, Messina, Bacoli near Naples and Civitavecchia. They reached Malta on 26 October 1530. A deal that year ended seven years without a home.
On a Rhodes old town tour, the Knights’ departure comes first. The Knights were given twelve days to leave Rhodes. They were allowed to take their weapons, valuables and religious icons with them.
Thousands of civilians sailed with the Knights and soldiers. Pope Adrian VI placed the Order in Viterbo from 1523 to 1527. Its navy waited at Civitavecchia from 1523 to 1530, beside the papal fleet.
Charles III, Duke of Savoy, invited the Knights to Nice and the nearby town of Villefranche. On a Rhodes old town tour, Nice was the Order’s last stop before Malta, from 1527 to 1529.
Pope Clement VII, himself a knight, arranged the 1530 deal with Charles V. Besides Malta, the grant gave the Order the island of Gozo and the North African port of Tripoli.
- Price: The yearly price of Malta was one falcon, and the Order paid it until 1798.
- Capital: Mdina lay inland and did not suit the Order’s navy, so Birgu became its capital.
- Harbour: Malta was poor farmland, but it had one of the best harbours in the Mediterranean.
The Order hoped to retake Rhodes. It made Malta its permanent home only after the Great Siege of Malta, 35 years later.
What happened in the first siege of the town of a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour is set in a town that faced a siege in 1480. The Ottoman fleet appeared off Rhodes on the 23rd day of the month after April. That arrival started the first siege of the town.
For a Rhodes old town tour, the background begins when Constantinople fell in 1453. The Ottomans then demanded tribute, meaning a payment, from the Knights. The Knights refused to pay it.
Sources differ on the size of the Ottoman force. One source counts 100,000 troops and 170 ships. Historian Norman Housley estimates only 10,000 to 15,000 men, while Konstantin Nossov says not more than 20,000.
Behind a Rhodes old town tour, Norman Housley puts the Knights’ defenders at about 3,500 men. Antoine d’Aubusson, the Grand Master’s brother, brought 500 knights and 2,000 soldiers from France to help.
The Knights and townspeople dug a new moat, or ditch, inside the weak eastern wall. The fighting lasted three hours after the Turks broke in. Grand Master d’Aubusson was wounded in five places.
- Losses: According to refugees from the Turkish camp, 9,000 Ottomans were killed and 15,000 were wounded.
- Duration: A Turkish encyclopaedia says the siege lasted three months, with a last assault on 28 July.
- Counter-attack: The counter-attack reached a top minister’s tent and took the holy flag of Islam as loot.
After the attack ended, the walls were renewed from end to end. A Turkish encyclopaedia says they became the strongest fortress in Europe.
What weather meets a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour meets hot, dry summers and cooler, wetter winters. Greek weather service averages for 1955 to 2010 give July an average high of 30.4 °C. Over the same years, January has an average low of 9.2 °C.
In winter, a Rhodes old town tour meets a lot of rain. December gets 152.8 mm of rain and January 151.8 mm. The coolest months, January and February, average 12.2 °C and 12.3 °C.
Rain falls away in spring. March has 68.9 mm, April 29.4 mm and the month after April 16.4 mm. In autumn, rain returns, with 56.9 mm in October and 89.6 mm in November.
On a Rhodes old town tour in summer, rain is rare. July gets only 0.3 mm and August only 0.2 mm. From November to March, Rhodes has 9.4 to 15.2 rainy days a month.
In 2018, Lindos logged a record 178 tropical nights, nights that never fell below 20 °C. During the July 2023 heatwave, forecasters expected highs of up to 45 °C on Rhodes.
- Humidity: Average air dampness, called relative humidity, is 70.4 percent in January and 58.9 percent in July.
- Winds: Constant winds are the reason that Rhodes has a great number of windmills.
- Heatwave length: Forecasters said the 2023 heatwave was able to last up to 16 or 17 days.
North winds rule the Aegean. From late September to late in the month after April, they take turns with southwest winds.
How did the island of a Rhodes old town tour join Greece?
A Rhodes old town tour takes place on an island that became part of Greece in 1948. The union with Greece was officially sealed on 7 March 1948. The Dodecanese islands were the last land added to Greece’s national territory.
On a Rhodes old town tour, 9 September 1943 comes first. A British team led by George Jellicoe parachuted onto Rhodes that day. It aimed to persuade the Italian commander to join the Allies.
The German occupation of the Dodecanese lasted at least seven months longer than in mainland Greece. The British kept the Italian tax and administration system. They removed only the rules with fascist content.
During a Rhodes old town tour, the year 1946 matters for the union. On 27 June 1946, foreign ministers met in Paris, and Soviet minister Molotov dropped his objections. The road to union opened.
On 21 September 1946, the Paris Peace Conference unanimously approved the union of the Dodecanese with Greece. On 31 March 1947, the British handed the Dodecanese to Greece at a festive ceremony.
- Flag ceremonies: Ceremonies on all the islands lowered the British flags and raised Greek flags that day.
- Military command: Vice Admiral Perikles Ioannidis became Military Commander of the Dodecanese, with his headquarters in Rhodes.
- Cemetery: Michail Stasinopoulos later said people in Rhodes told their dead of the union at the cemetery.
Greece approved the union on 9 January 1948. It dated the union back to 28 October 1947 as a symbolic gesture.
What do visitors ask about a Rhodes old town tour?
A Rhodes old town tour brings questions about Greek words, heat illness, dates, coins and phones. In Greek, the euro cent is called a lepto, plural lepta. The same name was used for hundredths of the old drachma.
What do common Greek greetings and polite words mean on a Rhodes old town tour?
Γεια σου is the informal Greek hello for one person. Γεια σας is the formal or plural form. The Greek hello γεια comes from ancient Greek ὑγίεια, which means health. Παρακαλώ means please. It also answers thanks.
What are the signs of heat illness on a Rhodes old town tour?
Heatstroke can cause a seizure, also called a fit, or loss of consciousness. It needs immediate medical help. Cooling aims for a body temperature below 39 °C, ideally 38 to 38.5 °C. No aspirin or paracetamol is given.
Why do Rodos and Rhodes differ on a Rhodes old town tour?
Greek took all 22 Phoenician letters and made five of them vowels. Roman spelling wrote a rho at the start of a word as rh. The ISO 843 standard writes rho as plain r. So Ρόδος becomes Rodos.
Why does Orthodox Easter differ from the western date on a Rhodes old town tour?
Orthodox Easter falls between 4 April and day 8 of the month after April. It can match Catholic Easter, or come one, four or five weeks later. Julian tables place its full moon five days after the real one.
What designs are on Greek euro coins seen on a Rhodes old town tour?
The Greek 2 euro coin shows Europa being carried off by Zeus as a bull. The design copies a mosaic from the third century AD. The edge of the coin reads ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ, which means Hellenic Republic.
Do visitors pay mobile roaming charges on a Rhodes old town tour?
A rule from 15 June 2017 abolished roaming charges, the extra phone fees abroad, within the EU. Crossing a border triggers an automatic message from the operator. It lists any data limit and services that still cost extra.