Rodos (City) Off The Beaten Path Tips by steventilly Top 5 Page for this destination

Further Afield

There are some really great places around the island away from Rhodes town. There's great beaches, superb places for swimming & snorkelling, fantastic historical sights and some delightful little villages. I'll cover these kind of places more on the Rhodes Island page when I do it.

Monte Smith - Ancient Stadium

Beside the theatre is the ancient stadium. This dates from the 3rd century BC, but what you see is again almost entirely a result of the Italian's reconstructions. I guess it's good as it gives you an impression of how it was, but I prefer to see ruins in their proper ruined state.

Monte Smith - Ancient Theatre

This ancient theatre is also on Monte Smith. It dates from about the 2nd century BC, though only 3 of the steps are actually original, the rest being "restored" by the Italians again. The three original steps are the different coloured ones, one of which Susan is sitting on.
Apparently the theatre is used for summer performances, though we saw nothing of this.

Monte Smith - Temple Of Zeus & Athena

Monte Smith is a hill some 111m above the town of Rhodes. We walked up to it from Rodini park, cutting through some nice resedential areas on the way.
At the top you can get great views down to the coast above Ixia & the resort part of Rhodes Town, but the main reason for coming here are the ancient remains of the old acropolis of Rhodes.
Shown here are the three remaining columns of the temple of Zeus and Athena. These were re-erected by the Italians, who excavated this whole site, along with many other sites on Rhodes. Generally they paid more regard to speed than to careful excavation, and their reconstructions are often described as "haphazard". Still looks nice tho ;-)

Rodini Park

We went to Rodini Park because the guide books made much of it. I have to say that we were disappointed (more in "tourist traps") but it was worthwhile being in that area because we wandered around the streets of that area, seeing the shops, cafes and houses of the locals that made no concession to tourism.
It was interesting, and very nice. While on this little walk we passed this church, which is both huge and beautiful. A good example of the kind of thing you can find when you go "off the beaten path", even in a big city.