Rhodes

Inside the walls, the lower town is a maze of cobbled lanes, arches buttressing the houses, small mosques and courtyards. Sokratous Street is the busy shopping spine; quieter lanes lead off it to the Suleiman Mosque, the Ottoman baths and the old Jewish Quarter, where the Kahal Shalom synagogue, the oldest in Greece, has a small museum.

TipWander in the early morning or after the cruise passengers leave in the late afternoon.

A straight, sloping medieval street of stone façades leading up to the palace. It was lined with the inns of the different "tongues", the national groups of the Order, each carved with coats of arms. Restored in the early twentieth century, it's the most complete street of its kind from the age of the Crusades.

The castle-like seat of the Knights stands at the top of the Old Town. An explosion in 1856 left it largely in ruins, and what you see today is a lavish Italian reconstruction of the 1930s, with grand halls, Hellenistic and early Christian mosaic floors brought from Kos, and exhibitions on ancient and medieval Rhodes.

TipThe 2026 official listing gives summer hours (April to October) of 08:00 to 20:00 and shorter winter hours with Tuesdays closed; check before you go.

The Old Town is encircled by around four kilometres of massive walls, moat and bastions, rebuilt by the Knights to withstand Ottoman artillery. A section of the walkway along the top is open with a separate ticket, but only for limited hours: the 2026 official listing shows it open Monday to Friday, 12:00 to 15:00, in summer, and closed in winter. You can also walk the dry moat below, which is free and green.

Housed in the Hospital of the Knights, a fifteenth-century Gothic building around an arcaded courtyard, the museum holds finds from Ialysos and Kamiros, Classical and Hellenistic sculpture including the Bathing Aphrodite statuette, a huge head of the sun god Helios, and the Knights' carved tombstones upstairs.

The old harbour just outside the walls, guarded by bronze statues of a stag and a doe on columns at its mouth, where legend wrongly places the Colossus. Along the mole stand three medieval windmills and the Fort of St Nicholas, and the waterfront is lined with Italian-era buildings, the round New Market and excursion boats.

On a hill west of the modern town lie the remains of the ancient city's acropolis: the re-erected columns of the Temple of Pythian Apollo, a restored marble odeon and a long Hellenistic stadium. Entry is free, and it's a popular place for sunset over the sea.

A spa built in the 1920s by the Italian architect Florestano di Fausto, with domes, colonnades and pebble mosaics in a mix of Art Deco and Byzantine-revival styles, set above a rocky cove for swimming. It's about ten kilometres south of town and charges an entrance fee.

A small, deep cove of emerald water between pine-covered cliffs near Faliraki, named after the actor, who filmed The Guns of Navarone on Rhodes. It's beautiful for snorkelling, but tiny, so come early in summer.

High on a rock above the white village of Lindos, the acropolis combines the fourth-century BC Doric Temple of Athena Lindia, a monumental stairway and propylaea, a 42-column Hellenistic stoa and a ship carved into the rock, all wrapped in the walls of a Knights' castle. The views down over the two bays are superb.

TipBe at the gate at 08:00, before the coach tours and the heat; the climb from the village is steep and has little shade.

A near-circular lagoon below the southern side of the Lindos acropolis, almost enclosed by rocks, with calm, clear water and a little white chapel. Tradition says the Apostle Paul landed here in a storm.

At the southern tip of the island, a sandy isthmus joins Rhodes to a rocky islet, with the Aegean on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. The steady wind makes it one of Europe's best-known windsurfing and kitesurfing spots, with schools and rentals in season; in winter, the isthmus can be covered by water.

A Knights' castle of 1480 perched on a sheer rock pinnacle above the west coast, with a whitewashed chapel inside its walls and views across to the islets off the coast. The steps up are short, and the beach at Fourni lies below.

One of the three ancient cities of Rhodes, along with Lindos and Ialysos, Kamiros spreads down a hillside above the west coast: streets, houses, a Doric temple, an agora and a large cistern from the Archaic period. Lost under earth after earthquakes, it was rediscovered in the nineteenth century and is quieter than Lindos.

A shady wooded gorge of streams, pools and small wooden bridges inland from the west coast. From about June to August, thousands of Jersey tiger moths, a local subspecies, rest on the trunks of the oriental sweetgum trees, whose resin attracts them. Outside summer, it's still a pleasant green walk, but without the moths.

TipWalk quietly and never clap or shake branches to make the moths fly; disturbing them uses up the energy they need to breed.

The hill above Ialysos was the acropolis of another ancient city. Today it has the foundations of the temple of Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus, a restored monastery of Our Lady used by the Knights, and the "Way of Golgotha", a path lined with Stations of the Cross ending at a sixteen-metre cross with wide views over the north of the island.

The small island of Symi, north-west of Rhodes, makes a popular day trip by boat from Rhodes town. Its harbour, Gialos, is ringed by colourful neoclassical captains' houses climbing the hillsides, and many excursions stop at the large Panormitis monastery on the south of the island.

TipFast boats are quicker; cheaper excursion boats take longer and include Panormitis. Check return times, and stay overnight if you can, once the day boats have left.