Rhodes

Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands, sitting in the southeastern Aegean closer to the Turkish coast than to the Greek mainland. Its capital, Rhodes Town, occupies the northern tip of the island and is built around a medieval walled Old Town that has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988. South of the capital the island opens into beaches, the village of Lindos beneath its ancient acropolis, and a dry interior of pine ridges and hill villages.

Rhodes Windmills at Mandraki Harbour

The Rhodes Windmills, also called the Mandraki Windmills, stand in a line at the entrance to Mandraki Harbour. They were the first thing that pulled me toward the island when I started researching it: three stone towers in a row, the survivors of a working group of as many as 13 to 18 mills that once ground imported grain for residents and passing merchant ships in the medieval period.

To photograph them I walked the harbour all day carrying 14 kg of gear, looking for the one angle that read the way I wanted. I settled on a long telephoto in broad daylight, standing well back so that the three towers stack into a single row, even though on the ground they sit some distance apart. The Fortress of Agios Nikolaos closes the far end of the harbour in the same frame. The mills change completely across the day: crowded and flat at midday when the cruise ships are in, silhouetted at sunset, then lit warm at night.

Fortress of Agios Nikolaos

The Fortress of Agios Nikolaos, also called Saint Nicholas Fortress, sits out on the pier at the mouth of Mandraki Harbour. It has guarded the entrance since the fifteenth century, and even without knowing its name most people read it instantly as the landmark of the harbour.

I came back for it on the night of a full moon. There was one composition and one chance: the moon had to clear the lighthouse cleanly, and I needed the clouds to hold off. They did, and instead of ruining the frame the low cloud went a pale lavender. The full moon sitting clean above the lighthouse, with a Greek flag caught mid-flutter, came together in a single 215mm exposure at f/8. It is a quiet, precise image rather than a dramatic one, and that is exactly why it holds up.

Kallithea Springs

Kallithea Springs is a restored thermal spa on the east coast, a short drive south of Rhodes Town on the road toward Lindos. The mineral waters were used in antiquity and the complex was rebuilt during the Italian period of the 1920s and 1930s, which is where its mosaic courtyards, palm trees, and domed rotunda come from. There is a small entrance fee, and inside you can swim off the rocks in clear water.

I shot it with photography in mind from the start. From a higher vantage point I framed the main dome together with the black-and-white pebble mosaics and a strip of the Aegean beyond, at 13mm. Then, indoors, a sun star broke through the small star-shaped windows of the dome and landed in the exact center of the composition. It held for a few seconds, long enough to switch lenses and press the shutter. If you like Greek city scenes as well, an evening at Monastiraki in Athens pairs well with a Rhodes trip.

Lindos and the Aegean at Sunrise

Lindos sits on the eastern coast about an hour south of Rhodes Town, a whitewashed village stacked below its acropolis and one of the most photographed places in Greece. I drove down before dawn intending to shoot the sunrise over the Acropolis of Lindos.

When the sun came up I turned around instead. Behind me, off the coast, two sailing boats were drifting past a run of rocky headlands, and the light was already strong enough to push the rocks toward silhouette. I put on the zoom, waited for the boats to line up, and made the frame of two boats crossing the rocks at first light. It says more about Greek island life than the monument shot would have: the sense of being able to take a boat and hop from one island to the next across the Aegean.

Rhodes Old Town

Rhodes Town grew up as a fortified medieval city under the Knights of Saint John, who held the island from 1309 until the Ottoman siege of 1522. The walls, the Street of the Knights, and the Palace of the Grand Master still stand, and the whole Old Town carries the layered look of Gothic, Ottoman, and later Italian building all pressed together inside one circuit of ramparts. The city was inscribed by UNESCO in 1988 for the way that history survives intact under the Knights of Saint John.

One morning I ran further than usual and came across the ruins of the Church of the Virgin of the Burgh, or Panagia tou Bourgou, a Gothic church from the early fourteenth century that was wrecked in the 1522 siege and again by wartime bombing. It was still dark when I arrived, so I waited about ten minutes for the sun to climb, then caught the light coming straight through the Gothic arches at dawn, with the Virgin Mary Gate and a passing cruise ship framed in the background.

When to Visit Rhodes

Rhodes has a dry Mediterranean climate and a long season. July and August are the hottest and busiest months, when cruise passengers fill Mandraki Harbour and the Old Town in the middle of the day. If you are there in peak season, the practical answer for photography is to be out at sunrise, before the day tours arrive, and to come back for the harbour at sunset and after dark.

May, June, September, and early October are the stronger months. The sea is warm enough to swim, the light is cleaner, and sites like Kallithea Springs stay calm before the crowds build. I visited just ahead of peak season and found the east-coast sites close to empty. Winters are mild and quiet, with short days and a good chance of dramatic sky.

Rhodes rewards a car. Rhodes Town, Mandraki Harbour, and the Old Town are all walkable once you are in the capital, but the sites that string down the east coast, Kallithea Springs and then Lindos, sit along a single road south and are far easier to reach by driving than by bus. The drive from Rhodes Town to Lindos runs roughly an hour, with places worth stopping for along the way.

The island is also a hub for the wider Dodecanese. Ferries connect Rhodes to Symi, Kos, and the smaller islands nearby, which is what makes the idea of hopping across the Aegean by boat feel so natural once you are there. An international airport on the west coast handles most arrivals.

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