Rhodes Small Ship Cruises

A bronze statue of the sun god Helios, raised beside Rhodes harbor between 292 and 280 BC to celebrate the city's survival of a year-long siege, and counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It stood about 33 m (108 ft) tall — roughly two-thirds the height of the Statue of Liberty. Despite the famous illustrations, it did not straddle the harbor entrance: a bronze figure that size could not have stood with its legs apart without collapsing under its own weight.

An earthquake in 226 BC snapped it at the knees and brought it down on land after just 54 years of standing. The Rhodians left it where it fell on the advice of the Oracle at Delphi, and the wreckage lay there for more than 800 years as a tourist attraction in its own right — Pliny records visitors marveling at the scale of the fragments. A later, much-doubted account says an Arab force sold the bronze to a merchant in AD 653, who is said to have carried it off on 900 camels; nothing of it has ever been found.

Ancient sources give it as 70 cubits, about 33 m (108 ft) from feet to crown, standing on a marble pedestal that added perhaps another 15 m (49 ft). That made it the tallest statue of the ancient world, and it is close in scale to the Statue of Liberty measured the same way — Liberty's figure alone is 46 m (151 ft). Nobody knows exactly where it stood; the harbor mole, the breakwater and the acropolis above the port have all been argued for.

Rhodes Old Town is the anchor — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, ringed by roughly 4 km (2.5 mi) of Hospitaller walls with 11 gates, and still home to about 6,000 people. Beyond it, Lindos gives you a Doric temple of Athena from around 300 BC, set within a Crusader fortress, above the near-enclosed cove of St Paul's Bay, 40 km (25 mi) down the east coast. Add the Valley of the Butterflies, the ruins of ancient Kamiros, and a 220 km (137 mi) coastline with beaches on both the sheltered east and the windswept west.

The east coast is the calm side — Tsambika, Agathi and Anthony Quinn Bay for clear water over rock, Faliraki for the full resort experience, and the sweep below Lindos for shallow swimming. The west coast catches the wind, making Ialysos and Theologos two of the better windsurfing and kitesurfing beaches in the Aegean. At the island's southern tip, Prasonisi is the oddity: a sandspit with the Aegean breaking on one side and the Mediterranean on the other, walkable in summer and submerged in winter.

Hot, dry summers and mild winters, with more sunshine than almost anywhere in Europe — Rhodes Airport records 3,180 hours a year, including 391 hours in July alone. July and August average a daily high of about 30.5°C (87°F) with nights around 25°C (77°F); May and October are gentler at roughly 24–26°C (75–79°F). The sea is swimmable from late May, peaking near 27°C (81°F) in August and still around 24°C (75°F) in October.

Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese, in the far southeastern Aegean, 363 km (226 mi) east-southeast of the Greek mainland and only 18 km (11 mi) off the Turkish coast at the nearest point. Rhodes Town, at the island's northern tip, is about 25 nautical miles (46 km / 29 mi) from Marmaris in Turkey — an hour by fast ferry. Athens is roughly an hour away by air, or 15 to 25 hours by overnight ferry from Piraeus.

Three things above all: the Colossus, the medieval walled town the Knights Hospitaller built between 1309 and 1523, and a climate that keeps the island open long after the rest of Greece has closed. It is one of the largest and best-preserved inhabited medieval towns in Europe, with the Palace of the Grand Masters, the cobbled Street of the Knights, and a working Ottoman quarter inside the same walls. It is also known for Lindos, the Valley of the Butterflies, and a beach coastline that changes character depending on which side of the island you stand on.

Ships berth alongside in the main commercial harbor — the terminal area is signed variously as the Tourist Port or Kolona, with the adjacent Akandia quay taking ferries and the largest vessels — immediately outside the Old Town walls. It is about a five-minute walk to the nearest medieval gate, the Freedom Gate, with the Marine Gate a little further along. Tenders are not normally needed; small ships sometimes use Mandraki, the old harbor, which is closer still.

You can walk off the ship straight into the Old Town, which is the rare case where the best sight is at the gangway — allow two to three hours for the Palace of the Grand Masters, the Street of the Knights, and the Archaeological Museum. If you would rather see the island, Lindos is 40 km (25 mi) down the east coast, about 50 minutes by road, and the acropolis climb from the pedestrian-only village takes 10 to 15 minutes. Doing both in one call is tight but feasible on a long port day.

The euro. Greece has used it since 2002, and Rhodes is in the EU and the Schengen area, so no currency change is needed anywhere in the Dodecanese. Cards are accepted almost everywhere in Rhodes Town and Lindos, though small tavernas, village kafeneia, and the donkey and boat operators often prefer cash.

About 363 km (226 mi) as the crow flies, southeast across the Aegean. Flights from Athens take roughly an hour and run several times daily year-round; the ferry from Piraeus is an overnight passage of 15 to 25 hours depending on the route and the number of island calls. Most cruise itineraries reach Rhodes from Crete, Santorini, or the Turkish coast rather than directly from Athens.

Rhodes covers 1,401 sq km (541 sq mi), making it the fourth-largest Greek island and the biggest in the Dodecanese by a wide margin. It runs about 80 km (50 mi) from north to south and 38 km (24 mi) across at its widest, with 220 km (137 mi) of coastline and a population of roughly 125,000. Mount Attavyros, at 1,216 m (3,990 ft), is high enough to hold clouds when the coast is clear.

Rhodes is Greek — part of the Dodecanese in the South Aegean Region, formally incorporated into Greece on 7 March 1948 after Italian rule. The confusion is geographic: the island lies just 18 km (11 mi) off the Turkish coast and is far closer to Asia Minor than to mainland Greece, which is 363 km (226 mi) away. You will need a passport and a separate entry for the day ferry to Marmaris, but nothing changes on Rhodes itself.

A major maritime and commercial power. The city of Rhodes was founded in 408 BC by the union of three older city-states — Ialysos, Kamiros and Lindos — and its fleet and harbor dues made it rich enough to raise the Colossus after surviving the siege of Demetrius in 305–304 BC. It also gave the ancient world a body of maritime law that the Romans later absorbed, and a school of rhetoric that drew Cicero and Julius Caesar.