Rhodes Old Town
Rhodes is the capital of the island, and is located in the northern part of the island. The city has spacious and wide streets, parks as well as many modern buildings and hotels. In the city center there are luxury hotels and shops along with neoclassical buildings reminiscent of the old times and occupations by the Turks and Italians.
A large number of top hotels of all categories and modern buildings, located in the very center of the city, and not far from the long sandy and pebble beaches, which stretch the entire length of the city, attract a large number of tourists from all over the world.
Rhodes has two faces, the old town and the new town, where hotels, cafes, restaurants, discotheques, summer gardens that are open all night are located. However, Rhodes is known for its far-famed fortress. It houses objects from the long and rich history of Rhodes, as well as old taverns and shops. The old town of Rhodes is one of the best preserved towns in the Mediterranean. The Palace of the Knights is a real experience.
As you approach the walls of the Old Town of Rhodes, you are not even aware that you are entering the oldest inhabited medieval city in Europe. About 6,000 people live and work in the Old Town of Rhodes, in the same buildings where the Knights of the Order of St. lived six centuries ago. Ivana. The walls of the Old Town of Rhodes are an interesting example of military architecture. The old city of Rhodes was protected by 4 km long defensive walls, the thickness of which in some places is more than 12 m, and a moat more than 21 m wide, which was never actually filled with water. You will learn more about the walls and their history if you join a guided tourist tour of the walls that starts in the courtyard of the Grand Master’s Palace, and which takes you around the northern side of the walls and ends at the Koskinou city gate.
The old town of Rhodes unites medieval buildings, Byzantine and Gothic churches, mosques, fountains, Turkish baths, Italian architecture, museums, palaces, oriental motifs, shops and cafes into one picturesque whole. In the Old Town of Rhodes, streets are named after famous Greek scientists and orators, such as Aristotle Street, Socrates Street or Hippocrates Square, but there are about 200 streets and alleys that simply do not have a name. The most famous and important of all the streets in the Old Town is Sokratova Street, which can be considered the main street of the Old Town of Rhodes. Sokratova street, together with the old town market – bazaar and the walls, has since ancient times divided two parts of the Old Town: Castello, which has official buildings, and the larger southern part called Chora, where Greeks and Europeans lived.
Mandraki is one of the three ports in the city of Rhodes. Mandraki is the most famous, most beautiful and picturesque port of the city. The port of Mandraki keeps anchored yachts and sailboats (whose owners are mostly millionaires), but also old fishing boats. Boats depart daily from the port of Mandraki for excursions to the nearby islands or to the beautiful beaches of the island of Rhodes. On the pier in the port of Mandraki is the lighthouse of St. Nikola and three old medieval windmills where grain used to be ground that would be unloaded from merchant ships that docked there in the port. From the port of Mandraki, you can see the impressive walls of the medieval city and numerous monumental buildings surrounding the port of Mandraki, such as the new market, the archbishop’s palace, the Church of the Annunciation, the main post office, the municipality, the theater and the government building.
Mandraki is the most picturesque port of Rhodes town and the island of Rhodes in general. Mandraki was once a military port of ancient Rhodes, and its entrance could be closed with chains. Now that entrance is decorated with statues of the Rhodian deer. In the place where some say that the famous ancient Colossus of Rhodes once stood, declared one of the seven wonders of the world, today there are two pillars on top of which there are bronze statues, on the left – a bronze statue of the deer Elaphos, and on the right – the hinds of Elafina , and seem to greet everyone who sails into or out of the harbor. Elafos and Elafina have become a modern symbol of the city of Rhodes.
