Rhodes Town (Part 3) The Knights’ Hospital now the Archaeological Museum

On Monday 22 August we made our way into Rhodes town once again. The previous day we’d walked past the 15^th century Knights’ Hospital but this time we intended to visit the archaeological museum it houses.

Having bought our tickets, we were pointed in the direction of the main courtyard of the hospital.

The quadrangle itself has a shady arched walkway around its perimeter and, in the corner, a long stairway up to the second level. Rooms off this upper level of the quadrangle house displays of pottery from every era of the whole of the history of Rhodes. No photographs are allowed but, whilst some of the pieces are beautiful and some very impressive, having visited so many pottery-filled rooms in quick succession, we rather felt that we had had our fill of terracotta shards.

The main hospital ward   

Also off this upper level is the room that had been the main hospital ward. It is a fairly dull and gloomy room, despite the strong summer sun outside when we visited, and can’t have been the most conducive of places in which to recover from significant ill heath.

Off the end of the ward are a couple of brighter and airier rooms now containing a display of statues. In particular, a 1^st century BC statue of Aphrodite bathing, known as the Rhodes Venus, caught our eye.

Entrance to the gardens   

Having seen all the indoor artefacts, we headed out into the hospital’s gardens, an oasis of cool green, fountains and ponds in the heart of the town.

Under a covered area several very large mosaics are displayed. Though the mosaics were designed as floor decoration, they are now mounted on the veranda’s walls so that they can be more easily seen and better appreciated by visitors.

Mosaics:  Bellerophon on Pegasus lancing Chimaera a (L), The Abduction of Europe by Zeus (centre),
 and a Centaur

One, dating from the 2^nd half of the 3^rd century BC, was found in the central part of Rhodes in 1966 and shows the abduction of Europe by Zeus who had transformed himself into a bull. Another depicts a centaur just returned from hunting and holding up the hare that he has caught. There is also a mosaic showing Bellerophon, the mythical hero from Corinth, riding his winged horse Pegasus and about to lance the Chimaera. This beast, with lion, goat and snake features, terrorised the land of Lycia in Asia Minor (now the SW coast of Turkey). Pegasus was a gift to Bellerophon from his father, the god Poseidon.

Wandering around the maze-like gardens we came upon a rather nice stone house, which had been preserved in an Ottoman style.

View down into the courtyard and across to the buildings in Odós Ippotón   

From the upper windows of the house we could look down into the courtyard garden and across to the buildings in Odós Ippotón, the Street of the Knights. Having seen the house we had seen the whole of the Knights’ Hospital and so we made our way back out to explore the town a little more.

We worked our way systematically across the areas of Rhodes town we hadn’t seen and ended up quite surprised at how much we’d actually covered the previous day.

Back on board BV, we had invited Michael and Daniel across for a final evening get-together. They arrived bearing gifts of wine, local cheese bread and canapés. Daniel had sautéed some small parcels of prosciutto containing mozzarella, fig and basil; just divine and perfect with a glass of wine. As always, they were great company and the conversation flowed very easily covering everything from BREXIT, the US presidential elections, the Turkish attempted coup, how the repair was going on their alternator, top places to visit on a sailing yacht and, of course, our recent experiences exploring Rhodes town. At some stage we discussed how much we had enjoyed visiting Turkey and were very much reminded that, with our new over-wintering plans for BV, we were unlikely to be back there for quite some time. It got us thinking about where we should sail to next.

Rhodes Town, Greece