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Lindos  LINDOS on the east coast of Rhodes has excellent harbours, but little fertile land (the opposite of Kamiros). It fl ourished on trade in the archaic period, and its sixth century BC king, Kleoboulos, was accounted one of the seven Wise Men of antiquity. The fame of its principal deity, Athena, persisted into late antiquity. The fi lming here and elsewhere on Rhodes of ‘The Guns of Navarone’ is a later claim to fame.


The ancient city, now covered by the modern village, lay around the great rock of the acropolis, the fl at top of which was not big enough to contain more than a handful of religious and civic buildings. We ascend by a steepish paved path reaching fi rst a platform where the stern of a triemiolia, the fast counter-pirate ship for which the Rhodians were famous, is carved into the cliff-face; an inscription of about 200 BC tells us that it was erected in honour of Hagesandros, son of Mikion. A flight of steps takes us under the city-wall built on ancient foundations by the Knights of St. John, under the castle of their local commandant (c.1500 AD), and out onto the triangular acropolis.


Thoroughly excavated by the Danes in the early twentieth century, and extensively restored by the Italians in the 1930s (the work of reconstruction was resumed quite recently), the site gives a good idea of how it looked in Hellenistic and Roman times. On the southern apex, with marvellous views down precipitous cliffs, is the fourth century BC Doric temple of Athena, with its pillared gateway below. Broad steps lead down from the gateway into the back of a large portico of about 200 BC (87 m. long, 42 columns), shaped like an E without the central hasta; the daring excision of part of the back wall of the portico to admit the stairs allowed the architect to shape the site so that all the buildings seem to fl ow down from the little temple of Athena at the apex. A second fl ight of steps leads down from the portico’s front terrace (under which are storage-vaults) to an area just in front of the northern battlements which in Roman times was occupied by a small Ionic temple. To the west is an exedra (semi-circular ornamental seat) erected in about 200 BC in honour of Pamphilidas, a priest of Athena. A locked thirteenth century church next to the commandant’s castle completes the inventory of the main buildings on this compact, spectacular site, but the wealth of inscriptions excavated by the Danes and stored around the commandant’s castle will detain the specialist.


The narrow winding streets of Lindos village are most attractive; the whitewashed houses with their ornamental gates mostly date from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and their architecture is a strange mix of Venetian, Turkish, and Gothic. In July and August the place is awash with tourists, but development is rigorously controlled, and no cars are allowed inside. After the acropolis, the choices include a wander around the numerous shops, a swim at the beach (the former north harbour), or visits to some of the few ancient remains not covered by modern buildings, for example the Hellenistic theatre south of the acropolis or the necropolis with its rock-cut graves to the west.

WESTMINSTER CLASSIC TOURS