Charaki

This guide to Charaki in Rhodes follows the clifftop fortress above the harbor from its capture by the Knights of Saint John in 1306, when they took the gate after three days of assault, through two centuries of rebuilding under Grand Masters Orsini and Pierre d'Aubusson. Byzantine walls already stood on the site, patched over from an older refuge nobody can fully date. A cistern was cut straight into the rock, and five nearby villages were ordered to shelter here whenever danger came.