Rhodes (Rodos) is one of the far eastern Greek islands lying just off the coast of Turkey which can be accessed via a ferry
main town is Rhodes on the NE tip with population 125,000 and originally built in 404BC, rebuilt into a model of the European medieval ideal by the Knights Hospitaller Knights of Rhodes with strong walls in c1310
80km long x 38km wide spearhead shaped mountainous limestone island with pine and cypress forests; airport is 14km from Rhodes city
hot-summer Mediterranean climate
island is dotted with small villages of whitewashed homes
shores are rocky
Colossus of Rhodes of their sun god Helios (c304BC) was destroyed in the earthquake of 226BC
an earthquake in 1481 destroyed much of the city with further damage from quakes in 1926 and 2008
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitaller) ruled the island from 1310 to 1522 when the city fell to the large army of Suleiman the Magnificent after a 6 month siege and the Knights then moved the base of their operations to Malta while the Ottomans rued Rhodes for the next 4 centuries and there are still around 4000 Turks living there
1912, Italy seized Rhodes from the Ottomans during the Italo-Turkish War resulting in many Italians colonizing the island
in 1943, Germany succeeded in occupying the island with the Battle of Rhodes and then sent the local Jews to concentration camps - in the 1920's, Jews accounted for a third of the population and by the 1940's there were ~2000 living there before Germany invaded
in 1947, at the Paris Peace Treaties, Rhodes, together with the other islands of the Dodecanese, was united with Greece and the 6,000 Italian colonists were forced to abandon the island and returned to Italy, although some 2000 still remain.
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