Merian – Rhodos (2019)

Rhodes has two faces. You can easily spend an entire holiday between a hotel, the beach and the discos, but you can just as easily travel from village to village and monastery to monastery, forgetting that Rhodes is the Aegean Seas most important holiday island after Crete. Part of the Dodecanese, or Twelve Islands, lying off the southwestern coast of Turkey, Rhodes is in fact one of nineteen inhabited islands. It is the largest, covering 1,398 square kilometres and home to about 70,000 people, while Rhodes town, with 44,000 inhabitants, is the administrative centre of the archipelago. After centuries under foreign rule, the Greek flag has flown here again since 1947. The north of the island is once more in foreign hands, at least for a few months each year, with hotels, restaurants, discos and souvenir shops surrounding the old town behind its walls. This World Heritage city contains remains from ancient, Crusader and Byzantine times, while churches, chapels and monasteries bear witness to the Byzantine era, which ended in 1453. Travellers often encounter the hospitality of monks and nuns, as well as that of local people beyond the monastery walls. Traditional Greek life is best seen in the south, in villages such as Kattava, Asklpion and Sana, which have so far been less affected by tourism than the busy north. The most beautiful beaches lie along the still-rural eastern coast, while the protected historic town of Lndos is the main tourist centre. Despite its hilly landscape, rising 200600 metres above sea level, the island is not poor: in early summer it is surrounded by flowers, and it has plenty of fruit, vegetables and wine, with fishing still providing a livelihood.