Lindos Acropolis: Sanctuary, Harbour and Island City

The acropolis of Lindos is a high rock on the east coast of Rhodes, about 40 kilometres south of Rhodes town, crowned by the sanctuary of Athena Lindia and ringed by the walls of a castle built by the Knights of St John. Below it, the white village of Lindos spreads down the slope to two bays. For more than two thousand years this was one of the most important places on the island: an independent Dorian city, a famous sanctuary that drew offerings from across the Greek world, a Byzantine stronghold and a Hospitaller fortress. On a single rock you can see temple, stoa, church and castle together. On our Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus tour we spend the morning of Day 12 at the Lindos acropolis.

Acropolis, sanctuary and harbour in one place

Lindos owes its importance to its setting. The acropolis is a natural citadel, a steep rock rising directly above the sea, with sheer cliffs on the seaward side and a single practical approach from the village below. On either side of it lie sheltered bays: the larger main bay to the north and, to the south, the small, almost enclosed bay known as St Paul’s Bay, where tradition says the apostle Paul landed during a storm. A rock that could be defended, harbours that could shelter ships, and a position on the sea routes along the east coast of Rhodes: these are the reasons a city grew here and stayed for so long.

The acropolis was successively fortified by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Knights of St John and the Ottomans. Each left something behind, and the visible remains on the summit are a compressed history of the island.

A Dorian city and its sanctuary

Lindos was one of the three ancient cities of Rhodes, with Ialysos and Kamiros, founded according to tradition by Dorian Greeks in the early first millennium BC. It was an independent city with its own institutions, ships and trade, and one of the members of the Dorian Hexapolis, a league of Dorian cities in the south-eastern Aegean.

In the sixth century BC Lindos was ruled by Cleobulus, remembered by later Greeks as one of the Seven Sages, the wise men of early Greece. The city’s great sanctuary was dedicated to Athena Lindia, and it became one of the most famous in the eastern Mediterranean, receiving offerings from kings and generals as well as from ordinary visitors.

A remarkable inscription records that fame. The Lindos Chronicle, carved on a marble slab in 99 BC, lists the dedications that had been made in Athena’s temple before it was destroyed by fire in 392 or 391 BC, together with stories of the goddess’s miraculous appearances. It was found by Danish archaeologists early in the twentieth century, reused as a paving stone in a Byzantine church. It reads as a city’s careful effort to preserve the memory of its sanctuary’s prestige after the objects themselves had been lost.

Lindos declined in relative importance after the three cities of the island joined together to found the new city of Rhodes at the north tip of the island in the late fifth century BC. But its sanctuary kept its status for centuries afterwards. For the wider story of the island’s ancient cities, and of the new capital and its famous Colossus, see our guide to ancient Rhodes.

The monuments of the Lindos acropolis

The climb up to the summit is part of the design. Visitors in antiquity, as now, approached from below and passed through a sequence of spaces that grew more impressive as they rose. Near the foot of the final ascent, a relief of a Rhodian warship is carved directly into the rock, made around 180 BC. It once served as the base of a statue honouring a naval commander, a fitting monument in a city whose wealth came from the sea.

Above it, the great Hellenistic stoa, built around 200 BC, stretched across the slope, 87 metres long with 42 columns. Behind it rose a monumental staircase leading up to the propylaia, the formal gateway to the sanctuary, first built in the fourth century BC. Only at the top, after the stoa, the stairs and the gateway, did the visitor reach the Temple of Athena Lindia itself, a Doric temple built around 300 BC on the site of the earlier temple that had burned, set at the very edge of the cliff.

The effect is theatrical, and it was meant to be. The architecture controls what you see and when. The sea is hidden and revealed as you climb, and the temple appears last, against the sky and the open water.

Byzantines, Knights and Ottomans on the rock

The later history of the acropolis is written in its walls. In the Byzantine period the rock became a fortress, and a church of St John was built on the summit, probably in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, on the ruins of an earlier church. When the Knights of St John took Rhodes in the early fourteenth century, they strengthened the fortifications, building a castle on older Byzantine foundations before 1317; some of their towers still stand around the edge of the rock. After 1522 the Ottomans held the castle in their turn.

The result is a site where an ancient sanctuary sits inside a medieval castle, much as the Knights’ palace in Rhodes town sits on the site of a Byzantine citadel. Our article on the Palace of the Grand Master, visited two days earlier, explores the Knights’ other great building on the island.

How is Lindos different from Rhodes town?

The two places tell complementary stories. Lindos is the older of the two: a city that grew up around a rock and a sanctuary, independent for centuries, whose fame rested on its goddess and its ships. Rhodes town is the newer creation, founded in the late fifth century BC when Lindos, Ialysos and Kamiros pooled their strength to build a single capital at the northern tip of the island, where the sea routes between the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean meet. From then on, political power on the island lay in Rhodes town, while Lindos remained above all a sacred place.

The same pattern repeated itself in the Middle Ages. Rhodes town was the Knights’ capital and headquarters, with their palace, hospital and inns, and Lindos was one of the fortresses that guarded the island’s coast. Seeing the medieval town of Rhodes first and Lindos two days later shows how the island was held: a fortified capital at one end, and a string of castles along the shore, of which Lindos, on its rock above the sea, was among the most important.

Excavation and restoration

The acropolis was excavated down to bedrock by a Danish expedition, with Carlsberg funding, between 1900 and 1914. During the Italian administration of the island, from 1912 to 1945, parts of the monuments were restored, but by modern standards the work was poorly done: concrete was used extensively, and bases and inscribed blocks were moved from their original positions. Since then, Greek and international archaeologists, under the supervision of the Greek Ministry of Culture, have worked to repair the damage and protect the site. A project carried out between 2006 and 2009 recorded around 2,000 scattered stone fragments, including more than 400 inscribed stones, and improved the paths visitors use to move around the summit.

As at Knossos and the Palace of the Grand Master, part of what you see is twentieth-century restoration. Knowing that helps make sense of the site, and the more careful modern work is itself part of the story.

How hard is the climb to the Lindos acropolis?

It is a steep climb, but a short one. From the village, the path winds up through narrow lanes and then on stone steps and paths up the rock to the entrance, with further steps inside the site to reach the summit. Many of the steps are uneven and the stone can be polished smooth and slippery, so sturdy shoes with a good grip are essential. The summit is exposed, with very little shade, so a hat and water are worth having, and a morning visit is cooler. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2, Moderate: three to five hours of activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground.

Reading Lindos on a slow-paced visit

The best way to see Lindos is unhurried. On the way up, look at the village: its whitewashed houses and lanes still follow the slope beneath the rock, and its churches show that this has remained a living town through every change of ruler. At the warship relief, think about the sea power that paid for the sanctuary. On the summit, walk to the edge by the temple and look down at the two bays, and you will see why this rock mattered to everyone who held it.

After the visit, the afternoon of Day 12 is at leisure, with a group dinner in the evening. The next day we visit Ialysos and Kamiros, the island’s other two ancient cities, and on Day 14 we fly to Cyprus, where the tour continues in Paphos; our guide to Paphos Archaeological Park and its Roman mosaics picks up the story there. How Rhodes fits into the whole journey, from Santorini and Crete to Cyprus, is explained in our Eastern Mediterranean islands itinerary.

Lindos shows, perhaps more vividly than anywhere else on Rhodes, how one place could serve as sanctuary, harbour, city and fortress across two millennia. To climb it with a guide, in a small group of 6 to 14 travellers, explore the Santorini, Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus small group tour.