Rhodes

Leave Mandraki heading west along Eleftherias Avenue and climb residential Diagoridon Street for 25 minutes — British admiral Sydney Smith used this hill in 1802 to watch Napoleon's fleet, and locals still call it Monte Smith. Three restored Doric columns of the Temple of Apollo stand against pure Aegean blue, and the partially reconstructed ancient stadium and odeion below are free to wander and almost always empty. Morning is non-negotiable: the climb is genuine, the columns face east, and by 13:00 the sun flattens them into silhouette.

Tip: Shoot the Temple of Apollo from the west side looking back toward the columns with the sea beyond — at 11:00 the raking light carves every fluting in the marble. Descend via the ancient stadium rather than the way you came; the 1930s Italian reconstruction is intact enough to run a lap on, and you will share it with no one.

Walk 25 minutes downhill east through quiet residential streets, enter the Old Town through the Liberty Gate (Pyli Eleftherias), and find Tamam tucked on tiny Georgiou Leontos lane — a creative Greek kitchen serving under bougainvillea in a medieval courtyard that locals use as their everyday lunch spot. Order the slow-cooked lamb kleftiko with orzo (€16) and a plate of fava (€7), or the grilled octopus (€18) if you need seafood. Sit-down but fast, and a €20-€25 bill leaves you headroom for dinner.

Tip: Ask for a courtyard table when you arrive; the indoor room is pleasant but the courtyard is the reason locals come. Every restaurant on parallel Sokratous Street with a laminated six-language menu and photos of every dish is charging 40% more for worse food — rule of thumb: if the waiter speaks to you in English before you speak, keep walking.

Walk 4 minutes northwest up Ippodamou Street and the Palace of the Grand Master rises in front of you — the 14th-century Knights Hospitaller fortress that survived the 1856 gunpowder explosion that levelled half the Old Town, only to be rebuilt by Mussolini in the 1930s as a summer residence for himself and the king. We are viewing exteriors only: enter the dry moat at d'Amboise Gate on the north-west side and walk the full ditch counter-clockwise to St. Anthony's Gate. The scale of the walls from inside the moat beats anything on offer in the interior tour you are skipping.

Tip: Almost no one walks the moat — the queue for the interior is always at the main gate, while the moat path is empty in high summer. At the south-east corner of the moat, look up: you can see the 1480 cannonball scars from the Ottoman siege still embedded in the masonry, level with your eye.

Step out of the moat through the Palace's south gate and the cobbled Street of the Knights (Odos Ippoton) opens in front of you — 600 metres of Gothic façades exactly as the Knights Hospitaller built them between 1309 and 1522, restored by Italian architects in the 1920s and more convincingly medieval than most towns in Italy. Walk Ippoton down to Museum Square, then push south through the Sokratous bazaar, past the pink Mosque of Suleiman, onto Hippocrates Square with its Ottoman Kastellania fountain, and east to the Gate of St. Paul on the harbour walls. The afternoon light works with you the whole way — every honey-coloured stone glows after 17:00.

Tip: At 18:30 climb the Clock Tower of Roloi (€5) for the single best rooftop view in Rhodes — Old Town, Mandraki and Monte Smith all in one frame with the setting sun behind you. Walk Ippoton east-to-west going uphill for the photograph, not downhill: the angle compresses the Inns of the Tongues into a single Gothic corridor.

You have already arrived — Dinoris sits on Museum Square inside a 1530 Knights Hospitaller stable, operating as a fish taverna since 1960 and still run by the founding family. Sit in the vaulted stone room or, better, the square-side terrace under the plane tree, and order the shrimp saganaki (€18), the grilled whole sea bass (€32/kg from the morning Mandraki auction), and a carafe of white Athiri from a Rhodian vineyard. A three-course dinner with wine runs €45-€55 — the most memorable meal you will eat inside an actual medieval Greek stable.

Tip: Reserve at least 24 hours ahead in summer (email gets faster replies than phone) and ask specifically for a terrace table on the square — the vaulted room is atmospheric but you came to Rhodes to eat outdoors. Avoid every 'fisherman taverna' on Sokratous five minutes away: they charge Dinoris prices for farmed fish from the mainland, and the 'complimentary ouzo' waiters wave at you from the doorway always lands on the bill at €8 a shot.

Exit the Palace's south gate and you step directly onto the Street of the Knights — the entrance is 30 paces across the square, unmissable. This 600-metre cobbled lane is the best-preserved medieval street in Europe; each stone building on the north side was the 'Inn' of a different language group of the Knights of St. John (France, Spain, Italy, Provence, Auvergne), their carved coats of arms still above every door. Walk it now rather than after lunch — the low sun is blocked by the tall facades after 15:00 and the street goes flat and grey for photos.

Tip: Pause at the Inn of France (the grandest, roughly mid-way down on the north side) and look up — its gargoyles and the royal fleur-de-lis survived intact because the Ottomans plastered them over rather than chisel them off. The tiny 14th-century chapel on the north side is usually unlocked and empty; step inside for the pointed Gothic arches, strange to find in a Greek Orthodox city.

At the bottom of the Street of the Knights, the imposing stone building ahead of you is the 15th-century Hospital of the Knights, now the Archaeological Museum — the side entrance is 30 seconds away on Museum Square. Before seeing any artefact, climb the stone staircase from the inner courtyard to the first-floor vaulted hall — this was the Infirmary Ward of 1489, one of the oldest working hospital rooms in Europe. The museum's quiet treasure is the 'Aphrodite of Rhodes', a small 1st-century BC marble in the pose of bathing, hidden in a side room on the upper floor.

Tip: Your combined ticket from the Palace gets you in without the second queue — show the stub at the side gate. Do not confuse the two Aphrodites: the larger 'Aphrodite Bathing' statue near the entrance is a Roman copy; the original Hellenistic 'Aphrodite of Rhodes' is smaller, one room further in, labelled simply 'Aphrodite (Rhodes workshop).' It is the one you came for.

Leave the museum, walk three minutes south through the lanes to Sokratous Square, then turn right onto Agiou Fanouriou — Nireas hides in a jasmine-covered courtyard on the left. Run by the same family for over forty years, this is where Rhodes locals bring visiting relatives for seafood meze: grilled octopus (14€) charred outside and still tender inside, shrimp saganaki (13€) bubbling in tomato and feta, and warm bread to mop up the juices. Order four small plates between two people and you'll be out in 75 minutes, which is exactly the right pace for a day like this.

Tip: Never order 'fresh fish' from the glass case without asking the price per kilo first — even at honest Rhodes tavernas, fresh fish runs 70-90€/kg and one small bass can hit 40€. Stick to the meze: octopus, the saganaki shrimp, fava-bean puree (8€), and a small bottle of house retsina (6€). Ask for the back tables under the bougainvillea arch — they are shaded all afternoon; the street-facing tables bake.

From Nireas, walk five minutes east through the medieval lanes to the Marine Gate (Pyli Thalassini), step through the massive arch, and Mandraki Harbour opens up in front of you — the full run of Old Town walls rising from the water on your right. The two bronze deer on tall columns (Elafos and Elafina) mark the harbour mouth, where tradition places the feet of the Colossus of Rhodes. Walk the long stone breakwater out past the three Byzantine stone windmills to the 15th-century Fort of Saint Nicholas — this is the only angle from which you can photograph the complete walled city silhouetted against the Aegean, and afternoon light falls gold and soft on the west-facing walls.

Tip: The 'Colossus stood here' plaque is romantic but speculative — modern archaeologists place the ancient harbour entrance further south. Walk all the way to the tip of the breakwater; most tourists turn back at the first windmill, so the final stretch past the Fort of Saint Nicholas is usually empty, and the last windmill gives the postcard frame with the whole Old Town skyline behind it. Time your return for around 17:30 — the walls begin to turn bronze.

From Mandraki, walk back through the Marine Gate and cross the Old Town south along Pythagora and Agiou Fanouriou — about 15 minutes through lanes now lit only by wrought-iron lanterns. Marco Polo Mansion is a restored 15th-century Ottoman merchant's house, and its garden restaurant is the most atmospheric dinner table on Rhodes: stone walls, lemon trees, one candle per table, and a single short menu that changes weekly. Their slow-cooked rabbit stifado with hilopites pasta (24€) and prawns in ouzo (22€) are the signatures; a glass of red from Rhodes's Emery vineyard (8€) finishes it.

Tip: Reserve 24 hours in advance by phone and specifically request the garden courtyard, not the indoor salon — the indoor room is beautiful but hot in summer, and the magic is all under the lemon trees. PITFALL WARNING: Sokratous and Aristotelous streets are lined with 'sunset-view tavernas' that wave laminated multilingual menus and offer '2 courses + wine for 25€' — these are all tourist traps run by a handful of families serving reheated frozen food, and the view is of other tourists. Walk past every one of them; the real restaurants of Rhodes are in the quiet side lanes with handwritten Greek-only menus.