Legendary Rhodes

History comes to life in the walled city’s Old Town.

- Becca Hensley

ARRIVE BY CRUISE SHIP, as do many travelers to Rhodes, and you’ll experience a kind of unsettling déjà vu. From the deck of my Seabourn ship (the cruise line stops in Rhodes on a variety of Adriatic and Mediterranean itineraries), my first glimpse of the ancient, walled city fills me with awe. I’ve heard about the Knights of St. John the Hospitallier who built the wall in the 1300s, stopping at this largest of the Greek Dodecanese Islands en route to the Holy Land. From the water I can almost see them, swords in their scabbards, shiny armor glimmering in the sunlight.