Rhodes, Greek Ρόδος (Rhodos; watch too List of traditional Greek place names), is the largest of the Dodecanese islands, and eastmost of the major islands of Greece in the Aegean Sea. It lies roughly Eleven miles (Eighteen klick) west of Turkey, situated between a Greek mainl& and a island of Cyprus. Its people inside 2004 was estimated at 130,000, of which between 60,000 & 70,000 resided for good in the city of Rhodes, the main commercial message & people center. Rhodes is a capital of the District of the Dodecanese & of the Province of Rhodes, which as well includes the nearby islands of Symi, Tilos, Halki, and Kastellorizo.

Historically, it was known for its Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. A mediaeval city occurs as World Heritage Site.

Geography

the island of Rhodes is shaped rather a spearhead, 79.Septet klick yearn & 38 kilometre wide by owning the aggregate front yard of close to 1,398 kilometre² & the coastline of or so 220 km. A city of Rhodes is located at a far northern prevent of a isl&, including the places of the ancient and modern commercial harbor. A main air gateway ([http://www.hcaa-eleng.gr/rhod.htm Diagoras International Airport], IATA code: RHO) is placed Xiv klick to the southwest of the city inside Paradisi. A road network radiates from either a city along a east & west coasts.

A flora and fauna is more closely allied to it of Turkey than these are thereto of the rest of Greece. A interior is mountainous & sparsely inhabited, covered by having forests of Turkish Pine (Pinus brutia) and abundant animal including a Rhodian deer. Features include a and so-alleged Petaludes or even even Petaloudes Vale, or Valley of the Butterflies, where tiger moths gather in summertime; Mount Attavyros, at 3,986 foot (1,215 m) a island's greatest point of elevation; & a befittingly known as Seven Springs metropolitan area. When a shores come jolting, tillable sandlike strips survive in which citrus fruits, wine grapes, vegetables, and more crops flourish in the Mediterranean climate.

Outside of a city of Rhodes, the Faliraki resort, Lindos, Archangelos, Afandou, Koskinou, Embona, and Trianta (Ialysos) are important. A economy of the all island is geared toward tourism, the island's primary source of income.

History
A island was inhabited in the Neolithic period, although little remains of this culture. In the 16th century BC the Minoans came to Rhodes, and later on Greek mythography reknown as a Rhodian race it called the Telchines, and associated Rhodes by having Danaus; it was sometimes nicknamed Telchinis. In the 15th century the Achaeans invaded. It was, notwithstanding, in the 11th century that a island began to flourish, by using the coming of the Dorians. It was a Dorians world health organization late built a threesome crucial cities of Lindos, Ialyssos and Kameiros, which together with Kos, Cnidus and Halicarnassus (on a mainland) made higher the thus-alleged Dorian Hexapolis.

Around Pindar's ode, the island was said to become natural of the union of Helios a sun god and the nymph Rhode, and a cities were known as for their tercet sons. A rhoda occurs as pinkish hibiscus native to the island.

Invasions per Persians at length overran a island, however fallowing their kill per forces from either Athens in 478 BC, a cities joined the Athenian League. While a Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes remained largely neutral although it was still the member of the League. A war lasted until 404 BC, but by this instance Rhodes got withdrawn completely from either a conflict & got decided to last her have way.

Around 408 BC a cities united to form one territory, & built the recently capital on the northern prevent of the island, the city of Rhodes: its regular plan was superintended per Athenian designer Hippodamus. Yet a Peloponnesian War experienced therefore weakened a entire Greek culture that it lay open to invasion. Around 357 BC the island was conquered by Mausolus of Halicarnassus, then cruel to the Persians 340 BC. However their rule was besides short & Rhodes became the a share of the growing empire of Alexander the Great in 332 BC after he defeated the Persians, to the low relief of the citizens of Rhodes.

Using a dying of Alexander his generals fought for control. 3 of the babies, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigonus, succeeded in dividing a kingdom among themselves. Rhodes formed heavy commercial message & ethnic ties by using a Ptolemies inside Alexandria, and together it formed a Rhodo-Egyptian alliance which controlled trade throughout a Aegean in the 3rd century BC. the city developed into a marine, commercial & ethnic center & its coins were within circulation most everyplace in the Mediterranean. Its noted schools of philosophy & science, literature & rhetoric, divided up masters by having Alexandria: a Athenian public speaker Aeschines who formed a school at Rhodes; Apollonius of Rhodes, the uranologist Hipparchus and Geminus, the speechifier Dionysios Trax. Its school of sculptors developed the rich, striking style that may be characterized when "Hellenistic Baroque".

Inside 305 BC, Antigonus had his boy besiege Rhodes inside an attempt to break a alliance. When the year it gave higher & signed a peace agreement around 304 BC, leaving behind the brobdingnagian store of military devices. the Rhodians sold a devices & utilized a money to erect a statue of their sun god, Helios, a statue nowadays referred to as the Colossus of Rhodes.

Inside 164 BC, Rhodes signed the pact sustaining Rome, & became a major schooling center for Roman noble families, & was especially noted for its teachers of rhetoric, such as Hermagoras and the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. At a start the state was an significant ally of Rome & enjoyed many privileges, however these were late wasted around various intrigue of Roman politics. Cassius in time invaded a isl& and sacked a city.

In the 1st century AD, the Emperor Tiberius spent a brief exile in Rhodes, & Saint Paul brought Christianity to the island. Inside 297, the hanker Byzantine Empire period began for Rhodes, when a Roman empire was split and the eastern half became a Greek empire. Although a portion of Byzantium for the next one thousand years, it was however repeatedly attacked by various forces. It was number one occupied by Muslim forces of Muawiyah I in 672. Tremendously late Rhodes was retrieved for the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus during the First Crusade. Within 1309 a Byzantine era came to an prevent whilst the island was taken by forces of the Knights Hospitaller. Under a rule of the freshly known as Knights of Rhodes, the city was rebuilt into a model of the European medieval ideal. Several of the city's far-famed monuments, including a Palace of the Grand Master, were built in that cycle.

A heavy bulwarks which a Knights got built withstood a attacks of the Sultan of Egypt in 1444 and of Mehmed II in 1480. Eventually, nonetheless, Rhodes fell to the big army of Suleiman the Magnificent in December 1522. A pack remaining Knights were permitted to retire to Malta, and the island was a possession of the Ottoman Empire for nearly foursome centuries.

Inside 1912, Rhodes was seized from a Turks per Italians, and inside 1947, together with a more islands of the Dodecanese was united with Greece. It so bypassed numerous of a cases associated by having the "exchange of the minorities" between Greece and Turkey.

Throughout good deal of its history Rhodes experienced the thriving Jewish Community. From either a 1500's in virtually all of this community were Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) speakers. When you took World War II Nazi Germany occupied a isl& and deported the Jews. Virtually all ended higher death around various concentration camps. The remnant of the Jewish community lives inside Rhodes. A [http://www.rhodesjewishmuseum.org/ Rhodes Jewish Museum] maintains the history of the community. Descendent of the "Rhodeslies" currently use at times communities within various area of the U.S., Europe & Africa.