Things to do in Rhodes

Inside the walls

The Knights of St John took Rhodes in 1309. They spent two centuries fortifying it. What they left is a walled town with a dry moat around it, still lived in rather than roped off.

The Street of the Knights climbs from the harbour gate past the inns where each language group of the order lodged. The Palace of the Grand Masters closes the top.

Lightning set off forgotten gunpowder under the old church of St John in 1856 and took the palace with it. The Italians rebuilt it in the late 1930s as a royal holiday residence. The floors are Roman mosaics brought from Kos.

The town after the Knights

Suleiman took the town in 1522. The order left, and reached Malta eight years later. Four centuries of Ottoman rule left their own streets, easy to miss because the stone matches.

• Ottoman. The Suleymaniye mosque at the top of Sokratous, the Mustafa hamam, and a clock tower with the roofs laid out below it.
• Jewish quarter. Kahal Shalom, built in 1577 and the oldest synagogue in Greece, beside the square that remembers the community deported in 1944.
• The Hospital. The Knights' infirmary is now the Archaeological Museum, and it holds the small marble Aphrodite that Lawrence Durrell wrote a book around.

Outside the gates

Mandraki is the old galley harbour, and the Colossus is traditionally placed at its mouth. It never straddled the entrance, and nothing survives. Three windmills and a fort stand along the mole instead.

North of that the Italians laid out a new town of arcades and offices, running out to the sand at Elli. Coaches and day boats go from beside the walls.

Practical

• Heat. July and August sit in the mid-thirties inside the walls, and the stone gives it back after dark. Walk early, or in the hour before dinner.
• Ship days. Cruise ships berth at Mandraki, and the walled town is at its fullest between ten and four.
• Shoes. The cobbles are large, rounded and slippery wet. Nothing spoils a day here faster than the wrong soles.
• The maze. Gates look alike from the inside and phone maps drift between high walls. Note which one you came in by.
• Parking. Cars are kept out of most of the old town, and the lots along the moat fill by mid-morning.
• Eating. The main lanes charge for position. The residential quarter to the south costs less and cooks better.