Rhodes Archaeological Museum
Rhodes Archaeological museum is housed in the monumental edifice
that was the hospital of the knights of St. John. Construction of it
was begun in 1440 and brought to completion in the time of the Grand
Master d' Aubusson (1476-1503). The items on display in the museum
come from various parts of Rhodes and the neighboring islands.
Visitors enter the building by way of the main entrance on the east
side and find themselves in a large interior courtyard surrounded by
vaulted porticoes, on the architectural model of the Byzantine inn.
In front of the colonnade of the west portico stands a late
Hellenistic tombstone in the form of a lion with the head of a bull
between its front paws. Immediately in front of the pedestal on
which the lion stands is a floor mosaic that has been transported
from an Early Christian basilica at Arkasa on Karpathos. To the
south of the main courtyard there is a smaller interior court, the
floor of which incorporates another floor mosaic from an Early
Christian basilica at Arkasa.
A monumental staircase at the east end of the south side of the
main courtyard leads up to a timber-roofed balcony on the first
floor. Exhibition rooms open on to the north, west and south sides
of this balcony, containing objects - mainly pottery - most of them
from the Italian excavations of the period 1912-1948. Rooms 1-3 in
the south wing; and three of the rooms in the west wing (6-8) house
finds from the region of ancient lalysia (9th-4th c. BC). In the
north wing (rooms 9-15) are exhibited vases found during the
excavations of the acropolis of ancient Kamiros and the cemeteries
in the surrounding area.
The east wing of this floor is occupied by the large hall (I) that
was the patient's ward of the knights' hospital This has a central
colonnade on the long axis, and a small chapel with an apse
projecting on the east facade of the building. This room contains a
display of tombstones of knights and coats-of-arms from various
buildings dating from the period of the knights. Some fine examples
of sculpture from Rhodes and the neighboring islands are exhibited
in the rooms to the south of the balcony (ll-VI) and in the museum
atrium. Room II, which was the refectory of the knights' hospital,
contains mainly funerary sculpture from Late Antiquity.
The most important exhibit in the small Room VI is a Roman portrait
that has been identified as a copy of statue of Menander, the writer
of New Comedy (4th c, BC), another interesting exhibit here is a
part of a funerary or votive relief on which is preserved a scene of
a quad Riga and Nike. Room 111 (the kitchen of the knights'
hospital) contains an exhibition of Archaic sculpture, and Classical
and Hellenistic funerary relief's. The grave stele of Krito and
Timarista (ca. 410 BC) has been set against the west wall of the
main part of the room; this was carved by a local artist influenced
by the masterpieces of art on the Parthenon in Athens.
The two Rooms IV and V contain Hellenistic and Roman sculptures. In
room IV we may note the statue of the Marine Aphrodite in the type
of the Pudica; this probably dates from the late 4th c. BC, or is
possibly a late Hellenistic reworking of an earlier model; also the
archaistic Hekataeon and the porphyry head of Silenos, of the middle
Hellenistic period.
Room V houses a number of small-scale sculptures, many of them
representative of the light style that flourished in the late
Hellenistic period, which is conventionally called "Hellenistic
rococo". A good example of this is the small statue of Crouching
Aphrodite, a 1st c- BC work. The museum atrium contains various
statues and fragments of funerary monuments. A floor mosaic from
Arkasa on Karpathos has been laid in the recess on the south side of
the atrium, and at the back of the recess.
Rhodes Castello
Please visit Rhodes
Photo Album by Verena Struppert
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