Castle of Archangelos

The Castle of Archangelos stands on a rocky outcrop 216 metres high, about 27 kilometres south of Rhodes town and a short distance inland from the island’s east coast. Built by the Knights Hospitallers before 1457, it is one of their lesser-known Rhodes fortifications, though its popular nickname, the “Acropolis”, hints at older origins for which no clear evidence survives. The surviving enceinte, a thin curtain of quarry stone with brick courses, still stands several metres high in places; it lacks towers but uses angled wall runs for flanking defence, a Byzantine trait. A small 15th-century barbican guarded the gate, and inside stand foundations of medieval buildings, a turret from the first phase, and a barrel-vaulted chapel in the northeastern corner. After the Turkish occupation of 1522, ground-level gun-loops were apparently added. The castle was sacked and burned in a Turkish raid of 1457, when many villagers were enslaved; Grand Master Jacques de Milly began rebuilding, and the work continued under his successors, whose coat-of-arms reliefs, dated 1467 and later, remain visible. In 1503 corsairs plundered it again, and after abandonment it was partly quarried for building stone.

Heritage data from Wikidata, compiled and verified in the Atika atlas.