Rhodes: the old and the new

The island of Rhodes! For many, the first thought is of the famous Colossus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, straddling the port. Here is where it supposedly stood:

But let’s leave the harbor and take a walk with me in the medieval town at night down the Street of the Knights. Lamps give it a faint light in the darkness. You can almost see the torches and hear the clop clopping of the horses’ hooves, carrying the knights to the inns along the street where they lived, depending on their language and area they came from: France, England, Germany, Italy, Aragon, Auvergne and Provence.

Walking in the medieval town of Rhodes, which became a World Heritage City in 1988, you really feel like you’re walking back in time. The Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem came to Rhodes in 1309, conquered the town and ruled it for about 200 years, enough to leave their mark. The Knights originally tended the poor and sick, but became increasingly more militant, preoccupied with fortifying the town against the “infidel” Ottomans (who eventually did succeed in conquering Rhodes in 1522 and ruled it for 400 years). At the top of the Street of the Knights you reach the very imposing Palace of the Grand Master (what a fearsome title), as he watched over his knights. Today you can visit the Palace as a museum — there are mostly sculptures, mosaics and depictions of life at the time.

The palace was actually destroyed in 1856 by a gunpowder explosion and left for many years in ruin until the 1930’s when it was restored under Mussolini, during the time when the Italians ruled Rhodes.

(1930’s Italian architecture is plentiful in the new town, especially the public buildings around Mandraki Harbor, along with Arab and Ottoman). Rhodes, which was actually founded as a city in the late 5th century B.C. of course has had its share of invasions, due a great deal to its location in the southeast Aegean, and being a crossroads of east and west.

Away from the palace you wander in the maze of Byzantine and Ottoman streets. The island lives on tourism. Stop for a second and look at a straw hat, someone will immediately appear and tell you to come inside to see more.

If it’s a restaurant or cafe, you can’t really walk by without the waiter making a gesture to a table and offering “Would you like a drink? Would you like something to eat?” Or they ask where you’re from and expertly go into whatever language you speak. If you smile and say “no thanks,” that spurs them to open a menu right in front of you. If you speak Greek to them though, they don’t bother you!

Just the kinds of places you want to avoid…one evening with my brother and sister-in-law, who are visiting Rhodes, we go to a fish restaurant with music, guitar and bouzouki, okay a bit touristy, a little bit off of the old town path, in a big open space across from a park, and nobody tries to accost you to enter. We order what Greeks do when ordering a fish feast, you start with salads,

along with a mouth-watering aubergine boureki, i.e. eggplant stuffed with zucchini and cheese and a delicious sauce,

and then the serious stuff: grilled octopus, kalamarakia (squid), and finally fresh fish (Fish with heads! This was a great discovery when I moved to Greece.) The food is high quality and delicious (though yes a bit pricey). Each course is served with an actual differently decorated plate (see the salad). Not to forget the wonderful music. Add a clear sky with a rising waning moon and stars slowly coming out. A perfect evening.

Back to the heart of the old town. Next to all the shops with magnets, T-shirts and flip flops, you can find the Plateia Martyron Evreon (square of the Jewish martyrs). We watched a wreath-laying ceremony from various officials at the monument there in memory of the approximately 2,500 Jews from Rhodes and neighboring island of Kos that were deported on July 23, 1944 and sent to Auschwitz, sadly ironic that this was one of the last deportations of the war. (After the Italians withdrew in 1943, they gave the island to the Germans. Rhodes became part of Greece after World War II in 1945.) Of the 150 survivors, most settled in Athens, some went to France and Italy; today the Jewish population in Rhodes is just a handful.

In the early years of the last century, the Jewish population of Rhodes was thriving, so much that there were at one time six synagogues and a Jewish school in “la Juderia,” the Jewish quarter. Many Jewish Rhodians began emigrating in the 1930’s for better economic opportunities, mostly to the states (Seattle and L.A.), to Israel and many went to Africa, the Congo (!), former Rhodesia and South Africa. Every year there are commemoration ceremonies, and this year, being the 75th anniversary year, there were many activities, including memorial services, remarks and music at the one remaining synagogue in the old town, the oldest one in Greece, built in 1577.

Descendants (fondly known as “Rhodeslis,” come back to Rhodes every summer, and at the ceremony you could hear people greeting each other in French, Italian, English, Greek and Hebrew.

But let’s move out of the old town! What do many if not most tourists come to Rhodes for? The beaches! Water sports! The bars! The clubs!

Rhodes for sure is a city and an island of contrasts. The past of the old historic city contrasted with the new. Luxury hotels, like Gothic cathedrals of old, reach higher and higher up to the sky. Near the town on the western side, in Ixia and Ialyssos, one after another, the Zeus Cosmopolitan, Sheraton, Oceanis, Amanthus, Rodos Palace, and again, another block of hotels past the Casino until the northernmost point. From the pool to the beach and back to the pool. Breakfast and dinner in the hotel, prebooked and all-inclusive. Why leave the hotel at all? According to my friend Martha Frangiadaki, who has had a house on Rhodes since 1987, this arrangement is very problematic for tourism, as it is in other big resorts.

We stay at a small hotel near the Casino and swim in the beaches going north up to the Aquarium. Wonderful crystal clear water. This trip we don’t get to the rest of the island, and there’s so much to see! We explored it years ago when our kids were young teenagers. This trip we don’t have the time. That’ll have to wait for the next visit to this lovely historic island.

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.