Acropolis of Lindos

Interesting facts

The Lindian Chronicle, inscribed in 99 BC, listed the offerings made to Athena here, and was later found reused as a paving slab in a Byzantine church.

According to legend, Danaus, fleeing Egypt with his daughters, landed at Lindos and founded the sanctuary of Athena, dedicating a statue to the goddess.

In the sixth century BC Lindos was ruled by Cleobulus, counted among the Seven Sages of Greece, who is said to have restored Athena's sanctuary.

The sanctuary's fame reached across the Greek world: Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I, Pyrrhus and Philip V of Macedon all sent offerings to Athena Lindia.

The carved ship at the foot of the stairs is a trihemiolia, a fast Rhodian warship type, cut directly into the living rock.

The rock was fortified in turn by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Knights of St John and the Ottomans, which makes it unusually hard to excavate and read.

The Knights considered the Lindos castle their strongest fortress on the island after the walled city of Rhodes itself.

A Roman inscription records that a priest of Athena named Publius Aelius Hagetor paid for repairs to the walls and square towers in the second century AD.

The Danish excavators dug the summit down to bedrock, and many of their finds were taken to Copenhagen, where they are still displayed.

The small church of St John on the summit is thought to stand on the ruins of an earlier church from the fifth century AD.

Why it is worth it

The acropolis of Lindos sits on a sheer rock about 116 metres above the sea on the east coast of Rhodes, and it is one of those places where ancient, medieval and natural drama are stacked on top of each other. The approach is part of the experience: a steep stepped path climbs from the whitewashed village below, and near the top, at the foot of the final staircase, the rock face itself has been carved into the stern of a Rhodian warship. The relief is attributed to the sculptor Pythokritos and dated to around 180 BC; it once carried a statue of a general named Hagesander on its deck.

Above, the rock is enclosed by the walls of the Knights of St John, built some time before 1317 over earlier Byzantine fortifications, with a pentagonal tower on the south side. Inside them lies the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, worshipped here long before the classical temple was raised. A monumental flight of steps leads up through the Hellenistic stoa, originally 87 metres long and lined with 42 columns, to the propylaea with its five doorways, and finally to the small Doric temple of Athena at the very edge of the cliff. The temple dates from the fourth century BC, replacing an older one destroyed by fire in 392 BC; inside it remain the base of the cult statue and an offering table. Within the walls also stand the small church of St John, from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and the remains of a Roman temple.

What makes Lindos unforgettable is the setting: columns standing against open sky, the sea far below on both sides, and the tiny enclosed harbour of St Paul's Bay visible beneath the cliffs. The site was excavated between 1900 and 1914 by a Danish expedition of the Carlsberg Institute under Karl Frederik Kinch and Christian Blinkenberg. During the Italian administration of the island (1912 to 1945) parts of the sanctuary were rebuilt, with heavy-handed results that archaeologists still regret, so some of what looks complete is a twentieth-century reconstruction.

Getting there

Lindos lies on the east coast of Rhodes, about 40 km in a straight line (around 47 km by road) south of Rhodes Town, which is linked to the village by bus. The nearest airport is Rhodes International Airport "Diagoras" (RHO), about 35 km away. From the village the acropolis can be reached only on foot or by donkey up the stepped path.

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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