Rhodes was sunny and in the 70s and we had a wonderful visit
to the Lindos Acropolis. Picture 1 shows Lindos and the Acropolis. Lindos is
one of the “white villages” because everything is painted white. Similar to
other Greek islands in this respect, it differs in the color of the trim. In
Rhodes the trim is brown. In Santorini, for example, the trim is blue.
What you see on the top of the hill are the remains of the
Acropolis, surrounded by a medieval castle. Archaeologists have determined that
the original Acropolis looked like the image in Picture 2. It was built on 4
levels in the 4th to 6th century BC. What remains today
is shown in Picture 3. There’s an original store room from level 1, the vaulted
areas on level 2, the plaza area over the arches and some columns on level 3
and the plaza and remains of the Temple to Athena Lindia on top.
Athena Lindia was the Greek goddess of fertility. The image
shown in Picture 4 (number12 on the Acropolis image above) is what the original temple looked like. Picture 5 is a
picture of the remains today. Obviously, Athena Lindia was the basis for the
name of the village Lindos.
In the 12th century, the Knights of St. John, of
Crusader fame, built a fortress around the ruins. A close-up of the entrance is
shown in Picture 6. They also built the Church of Ayios Ioannis, shown in
Picture 7, on the plaza of level 3.
From the top we had lovely views of the rugged coastal areas
and beautiful blue water of the Aegean Sea. Picture 8 shows the view of St.
Paul’s Bay from the top. There’s a small opening in the rocks on the left side
that let small boats into the bay.
Natural oddity of the day: Picture 9 shows a string of
interconnected caterpillars. The entire length was 2-3 feet and each
caterpillar was about 1 inch long. This seems to be one of the few places where
caterpillars will actually do this.
Finally, Rhodes City is worth a visit itself. Unfortunately
we didn’t have time—next time…. Picture 10 shows the view from the ship. The
old city is entirely walled and the castle in the middle is also from the
Knights of St. John.
On to Turkey….
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