Inside the Walls: A Rhodes Local on What Tourists Miss About the Old Town
Dimitris Papadopoulos has lived inside the walls of Rhodes Old Town since he was a teenager. He runs a small ceramics workshop on a side street off Sokratous, plays backgammon at the same kafenio every evening, and has watched his medieval neighborhood transform from a quiet residential quarter to a UNESCO-listed tourist destination. We talked over mountain tea and loukoumades at his favorite spot near Agiou Fanouriou.
You've lived inside the medieval walls your entire adult life. What's that actually like?
It's like living inside a museum where nobody asked you to move out. My apartment is in a building from the 15th century — the walls are a meter thick, which means it's cool in summer without air conditioning. The downside is the tourists. From April to October, there are tour groups walking past my door from 9AM to 10PM. I have a small courtyard — that's my sanity.
But I wouldn't trade it. At 6AM, before the shops open, the Old Town is mine. The light hits the stone walls and everything turns golden. The cats come out — there must be 500 cats in the Old Town. You hear church bells. You hear nothing else. That's the real Rhodes.
What's the first thing tourists should do?
Forget the Colossus. Everyone asks "where was the Colossus of Rhodes?" and the answer is nobody knows. It fell in an earthquake in 226 BC and was sold for scrap metal 800 years later. There's nothing to see. The statues of deer at the harbor mouth are nice but they're modern.
Instead, walk the Street of the Knights. It's the most intact medieval street in Europe — built by the Knights Hospitaller in the 14th century, with their inns lining both sides. Go at 7AM or 7PM when it's empty. During the day it's shoulder-to-shoulder. At dawn, you have it to yourself and you can hear your own footsteps on the cobblestones. That sound, echoing off 700-year-old stone — that's the Old Town.
What about the Palace of the Grand Master?
Visit it. Entry is 8 EUR, or 10 EUR combined with the Archaeological Museum. Open 8AM-8PM in summer, closed Mondays. The Italian reconstruction from the 1930s is controversial — some of the mosaic floors were actually taken from Kos, which annoys people from Kos — but the building is impressive. The medieval exhibition halls give you context for what you're walking through.
But don't spend your whole day there. The Old Town has 200 streets. The tourists only use about 10 of them. Walk Agiou Fanouriou, Omirou, the back lanes behind the Ottoman Library. That's where the Old Town still lives. Old women hanging laundry from balconies. Small workshops. A guy repairing shoes in a doorway. The real life of a place that's been continuously inhabited for 2,400 years.
Where should people eat?
Not Sokratous Street. I'll say it plainly. Sokratous is the main tourist street and every restaurant there is designed to catch people who don't know better. The menus are identical, the food is average, and the prices are 30-50% higher than two streets away.
Walk to the lanes around Agiou Fanouriou. There are tavernas there where the menu is written on a whiteboard and changes daily based on what's at the market. Moussaka for 10 EUR. Grilled octopus for 12 EUR. Horiatiki salad that uses actual local tomatoes instead of imported ones.
For fish, go to Lindos village — but not the restaurants on the main square. Those are the trap. Walk up the back lanes toward the acropolis and you'll find family-run places where the fish came off a boat that morning. Main courses 12-18 EUR.
Speaking of Lindos — is the acropolis worth the climb?
Absolutely. But people make it harder than it needs to be. The Lindos Acropolis (12 EUR entry) is 116 meters above the village — a steep 20-minute climb with no shade. The mistake is going at noon. In July, that climb in full sun is genuinely dangerous. People get heat exhaustion.
Go before 9AM. Or after 5PM. The 4th-century BC Temple of Athena Lindia inside a Crusader castle, with two turquoise bays below — that view is worth the sweat. But go early.
Donkey rides up cost about 7 EUR, though I have mixed feelings about the donkey situation. The animals work in extreme heat. If you can walk, walk.
What's the most underrated thing on the island?
The Valley of the Butterflies — Petaloudes. 25 km from Rhodes Town. In summer, millions of Jersey tiger moths gather on the Oriental sweetgum trees. The shaded walk along wooden bridges and streams takes about an hour. Entry is 5 EUR in summer.
But here's what people need to know: do not clap or make noise to disturb the moths. Tourists do this to see them fly. It's harmful — it disrupts their rest cycle and can kill them. Signs say this everywhere. People ignore the signs. Don't be that person.
Also, Prasonisi at the southern tip. A sand isthmus connecting to a small island with the Aegean on one side and Mediterranean on the other. One of Europe's top windsurfing spots (equipment rental 50-70 EUR/day). It's 90 km from Rhodes Town and most tourists never get there. That's the reward.
What's the one custom tourists should know about?
Coffee is not something you rush. When a Greek person invites you for coffee, it's a minimum one-hour commitment. You sit, you talk, you watch the world. Ordering a freddo espresso and drinking it in 5 minutes while standing — that's offensive. Sit down. Order a Greek coffee or a frappe. Let it take 45 minutes. Nobody's timing you. This isn't Starbucks.
Also, always say "Kalimera" (good morning) when you enter a shop. It costs nothing and it changes how people treat you.
What do tourists get most wrong about Rhodes?
They stay for one day. A cruise ship docks, 3,000 people pour into the Old Town, walk Sokratous, take photos of the Palace, and leave. You cannot understand a place in 4 hours. You can barely find the good streets in 4 hours.
Stay three days minimum. One day for the Old Town, done properly. One day for Lindos and the east coast beaches — Tsambika Beach is stunning, golden sand, shallow water, sunbed and umbrella for 8-10 EUR. One day for the south or west coast. Then maybe you've started to understand Rhodes.
The island has 300 sunny days a year. For another sunny Mediterranean island with rich history, Malta offers 7,000-year-old temples and a UNESCO fortress capital. It's been inhabited for 3,000 years. A cruise stop insults all of that.
Dimitris's mountain tea had gone cold during the conversation, and he didn't seem to notice or care. A cat had settled on the chair next to him. The loukoumades were finished. The evening call to prayer from the Ottoman mosque drifted over the rooftops — a reminder that Rhodes has been, at various points, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, and Italian, and carries all of those histories simultaneously.
He was right about the 6AM light, by the way. I went back the next morning. The Street of the Knights was empty. The cats were out. And the stone really did turn golden.
