Overview

Cosmopolitan, spacious, immensely varied, blessed with a fullness of vegetation and an unforgettable radiance of light, the island of Rhodes has always been a proudly self-sufficient world of its own. The Hospitaller Knights of St John arrived in Rhodes at the beginning of the 14th century and fortified the island as a chivalric kingdom in the sea. Of all the cities in Greece, Rhodes is the only one that comes close to Athens in the density and richness of its monuments and in the sheer variety to be seen - Hellenistic, Mediaeval, Ottoman, Traditional, Italian Colonial - it substantially outshines the capital. Ancient Kameiros is one of the most untouched ancient archaeological sites in the Islands and few sanctuaries in all of Greece have a more improbable or panoramic site than that of Zeus Atabyros on the summit of the island's highest peak. Three of the most complete painted Byzantine interiors in the Aegean are to be seen at Lindos, Asklepieio and Tharri and there are many smaller churches that should not be missed. The island is home to many unusual trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and butterflies. In the 18th and 19th centuries Symi prospered remarkably from sponge fishing and boat building and its town became one of the most beautiful ports in the Aegean. Today the island lives by tourism and day-trips from Rhodes can seem to engulf the town. In addition to exploration of the town, a visit might ideally also include the discovery of the mountainous interior of the island and a journey by boat around its deeply indented coast. Chalki today is a peaceful retreat, offering uncrowded beaches, scenic walks, a dramatic landscape inland and an attractive seascape all around formed by its outlying islands.

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9781907859052

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Delightful, well-observed, literary accompaniments to the Greek islands, by a British scholar.A The Economist,Books of the Year 2010 So evocative and informative, one hardly needs to go... Lovely...A Bettany Hughes, Sunday Herald - Books of the Year2010 A remarkable achievement - a complete, island by island, 3,000 page survey of all the historical monuments in the Aegean...A Barnaby Rogerson, Country Life Wonderful... superbly structured; immense learning elegantly, unobtrusively offered; and outstandingly well writtenA Prof. Jon Stallworthy, Wolfson College, Oxford

Author Information

Nigel McGilchrist lectures widely in art and archaeology at museums and institutions both in Europe and in the United States. He was Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome for six years, taught at the University of Rome, for the University of Massachusetts and was for seven years Dean of the joint Faculty of European Studies for a consortium of American Universities and Colleges. In recent years he has been lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. Over the last six years he has walked every path and village of the sixty inhabited Greek Aegean islands in order to prepare the twenty volumes of McGilchrist's Greek Islands. He lives near Orvieto in Italy where he produces olive oil and red wine.

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