Postcards from Rhodes
shreds of memories, fragments of emotions
to tell overly rich island
history, places and atmospheres.
island that you can get lost in living large hotels or crowds
or rather, like a hidden hermitage
quiet and powerful.
strange island Rhodes
so full of history to stagger under the weight of its past:
born to be a place of commerce, forced to live for centuries as a fortress .
besieged, burned, torn by terrible earthquakes,
but able to rise each time.
We have passed the Phoenicians, Mycenae, the Dorians, Persians,
but especially the Knights of St. John, who remained there 213 years,
until Suleiman the Magnificent,
forced them to abandon their forts and take refuge in Malta.
them remains a city within a city
them remains a city within a city
made of massive walls and shady alleys,
round cobbled streets, courtyards that suddenly open up
austere buildings like those who inhabit them.
The suggestion of a leap over the centuries is so overwhelming as to alienate.
Here all'iboccatura port, legend has it that this becomes one of the Seven Wonders of the World: The Colossus of Rhodes
tall as a building, covered with copper,
a bow in one hand and a spear in the other.
The statue of Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippus,
would be Helios, the god of the sun,
husband of the nymph Rhodes that gave name to the island.
ergesse Tradition has it that the entrance to the military port (Mandraki)
but the giant is not nothing but
the legend and the mystery of his existence.
When the statue fell and shattered when a violent earthquake,
the inhabitants ran to question the 'oracle
that dissuaded from trying to rebuild.
His remains were left in place so
until the Arabs sold them to a Syrian merchant.
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