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Tucked discreetly into the south-eastern curtain of Rhodes’ medieval fortifications, the Red Gate in Rhodes—also known as the Gate of St. John—is far more than a side entrance. It is a stone witness to the shifting tides of power, trade, and belief that have shaped the island for over five centuries.
Opened in the mid-15th century by the Knights Hospitaller, it once served as both a controlled point of access and a backchannel for movement between the fortified city and the outside world. Through its arch passed merchants from Levantine ports, couriers bearing papal seals, Ottoman forces following their long siege, and later Italian engineers reshaping the old quarter to suit modern visions.
Look up, and you’ll find the contradictions of Rhodes carved into its face: delicate Arabic prayers etched beside Latin monograms, fleur-de-lis above scorched stone. Even today, the Red Gate doesn’t just open into the Old Town—it opens into its layered memory.
Two stories colour the name. Locally the gate echoes the neighbouring Tower of St John, a key turret in the Hospitallers’ ring of defences.
Farther afield, chroniclers tied the colour red to the bloodshed that followed the 1453 fall of Constantinople; Rhodes’ garrison supposedly daubed or nicknamed the entrance as a grim reminder of what awaited if the Ottomans reached their walls.
The dual title—Red Gate and Gate of St John—captures both the island’s personal devotions and its place in the wider clash of empires.
Before cannon battered its flanks, the Red Gate in Rhodes was prized for commerce. Pierced exactly where the lanes from Koskinou met Rhodes’ great market, the opening offered the shortest haul for carts groaning with grain and amphorae of wine.
Knights’ ledgers call it “the gate of Koskinou,” while townsfolk nicknamed it “the master builder’s door,” honouring the engineer who cut such a convenient breach. For two centuries the arch rang with the clatter of wheels and the chatter of half a dozen languages.
In summer 1522 Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent anchored 700 ships off Rhodes and poured perhaps 200 000 soldiers onto the beaches. The Red Gate in Rhodes became a focal point of defence—narrow enough to bottle massed assaults, yet wide enough for Hospitaller counter-attacks.
Eyewitness diaries speak of towers “flashing like flint and iron” as iron shot clanged against embrasures. After six desperate months the Knights capitulated, but the gate survived, a cracked yet unbroken witness to their stand.
Above the portal an Ottoman inscription still pleads: “O thou who openest the door, open for us the gate of happiness.” Folklore strikes a darker note.
A black mulberry tree once grew beside the arch and served as gallows under Ottoman rule; local martyr Constantine the Hydra was hanged there, his body left among the branches. Villagers swore that rain leaking through the masonry ran red, as though the stones themselves remembered the executions.
Just inside the gate stood the church of St Andrew. After the 1522 conquest it was converted into the Katuran Jamisi—the “Mosque of Blood”—its name recalling a moment during the siege when slaughter supposedly reddened the threshold like a river. Today the building is once again Christian, dedicated to the Virgin Mary of the Castle (Panagia tou Kastrou), a silent testament to the island’s religious pendulum.
On 5 May 1912, after the battle of Psinthos, General Giovanni Ameglio marched Italian troops through the Red Gate in Rhodes, fixed a marble plaque and turned the adjoining bastion into a command post. Three decades later British bombers pounded Rhodes; ceiling stones tumbled, hinges twisted, yet engineers patched the arch yet again. In 1943-44 British infantry re-entered through the same gate—this time as liberators. Few corners of the island compress conquest, occupation, destruction and restoration so compactly.
Find it: Head for the dry-moat footpath that skirts the eastern walls; the Red Gate rises opposite the small playground on Polychroni Street. If you’re inside the Old Town already, follow the signs for “Kokkini Porta” from Sokratous Street and listen for the church bells of Panagia tou Kastrou—the gate is one block south.
Essentials to notice:
Echo chamber: Stand in the centre of the tunnel and clap once; the double vault bounces the sound twice—architectural proof of a medieval anti-mine design.
Stone tattoos: Knee-high on the right-hand jamb, trace a sailor’s scratched galley and a tiny eight-point cross—both believed to date from the 1522 siege.
Colour shift: Touch the third voussoir up on the left. Its warm tint is natural iron oxide, not paint, but has fed the “blood-red” legend for centuries.
Best moment to visit: Arrive just after sundown. Modern lamps mounted in the moat throw a golden up-light that turns the arch into a glowing keyhole—perfect for long-exposure photography without harsh daylight contrast.
Accessibility notes: The inner approach is level cobblestone suitable for wheelchairs and strollers; the outer moat path is packed dirt and may puddle after rain.
Half gateway, half palimpsest, the Red Gate in Rhodes embodies everything the island has endured—commerce and crusade, massacre and mercy, Fascist plaque and liberation cheer. Cross its threshold and you stride through six centuries at once, adding your own footfall to the unbroken echo of history.
