Our sixth landing on the ORCA Saga Eastern Mediterranean Cruise was Rhodes, which was very justifiably awarded World Heritage City status by UNESCO in 1988. The previous Blog Post focused on the city walls and some of the old city which I exploring during the morning. After lunch on the Spirit of Adventure, Terry, Lexie and I decided to have a second look at the old city. In the morning, I had managed to miss the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights, so that was my main target.
We meandered around the streets until we reached the Hospital of the Knights of Saint John, which now houses the Archaeological Museum of Rhodes. I had passed the museum in the morning, but it didn't look open. It was open in the afternoon and it was well worth the time to have a look around inside it.
There is plenty on view in the Archaeological Museum of Rhodes. In reality, if they removed all the exhibits, it would have been worth entering purely for the stunning building. This was originally the Hospital of the Knights of Saint John. Building started in 1440, but it wasn't completed until much later than century.
The Knights Hospitallers are a Catholic military order. They were founded as a military force around the 1120s during the Crusaders in the Holy Land and had their headquarters in Acre until 1291. However, the order had already been providing cared for pilgrims in Jerusalem since 1099. After that they were based in Cyprus between 1302 and 1310, Rhodes from 1310 to 1522, Malta from 1530 to 1798 and for the following three years in Saint Petersburg. They were a military religious order under its own papal charter which were charged with the care and defence of the Holy Land.
The Knights Hospitallers have continued to modern times. Unlike the Knights Templar, which was a French military Catholic order which was also very involved in fighting for the Holy Land, but which fell foul of the Pope Clement in 1307, who ordered the members of the Knights Templar to be disbanded. Many were captured, tortured, before being killed.
The city of Rhodes fell to the large army of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522. The Sultan deployed four hundred ships and one hundred thousand men to the island. After six months, the island fell, which wasn't surprising given the Knights only had around seven thousand men. The surviving defeated Hospitallers were allowed to withdraw to the Sicily. Rhodes became part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when the island was captured by the Italian army in the Italo-Turkish War: this was a war which one of the regional conflicts before the start of WW1. It was occupied by the Germans in WW2 and handed to Greece in 1947.
Behind the main Hospital courtyard was a hidden garden on various levels. There were lots of miscellaneous exhibits in this area.
We were halfway up the hill to the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights. We just had to keep walking up the hill.
It was now mid-afternoon and we had to be onboard by around four. Strictly, that was still a half-hour before last boarding, but as we were part of the entertainment team, we were expected to be back before last boarding. Terry and Lexie decided to have a slow walk back to the ship. But I reckoned I had time to have a quick look inside the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights. After all, I don't know if I will get the chance to revisit Rhodes. It was a bit of a rush around inside, but well worth visiting.
Unfortunately, it was a quick dash around the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights, but it had been worth the visit. The history continued as I walked down the main road back to the harbour. This was the Street of the Knights of Rhodes and it was one of the main streets for the Knights to live in the days when they were based in Rhodes.
I was back on the ship with enough time to spare before last boarding. This allowed me the chance to get a hot drink before heading up to the top deck as we left this excellent heritage city. There wasn't enough light to allow for any surveying, but it was nice to watch our departure and to chat to some of the passengers to hear what they had seen on Rhodes, that I didn't have time to fit in.
