Rhodes - Discover the Unknown Rhodes

In the same period the geographer
Strabo affirmed that harbours, roads and
buildings are so superior to the other cities that
we know nothing its equal. By that time
Rhodes had already been conquered by the
Romans who sacked the city of her treasures,
filling the holds of their ships with the most
beautiful sculptures among which the
Laocoön, Scylla, Ulysses and Polyphemus and
the Farnese Bull to adorn the palaces of Rome.
Legs akimbo, protecting the port of Mandraki,
only the celebrated Colossus of Rhodes, one of
the Seven Wonders of the World, met a
different fate. Work of the sculptor Chares, a
pupil of Lysippos, the Colossus was in bronze,
32 metres high and represented the Sun God,
Helios. Erected between 302 and 290 B.C., it fell
during an earthquake in 226 B.C., after less than
a century and a half. Hundreds of pieces lay
about on the ground for almost nine centuries,
until at last they were bought by an oriental
merchant who wanted to fuse the bronze.
After the invasion of the Goths in the
third century A.D. the city was conquered by
the Byzantines, who in turn were besieged by
Persians and Saracens. Later on Venetians,
Genoese and Byzantines would contest Rhodes
until 1309, when the Knights of the Order of St
John arrived, patrons of the island until the
Ottoman conquest of 1522.
Every historical
period has left its
tangible signs,
except for the
Colossus, which fell
in the third century
B.C.