Ialysos
Ialysos is a town and a former municipality on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rhodes, of which it is a municipal unit; the municipal unit has an area of 16,7 km2. It is the second-largest town on the island of Rhodes, it has a population of 11,300, is located eight kilometres west of the town of Rhodes, the island's capital, on the island's northwestern coast. The town is situated near the site of the ancient Doric polis of Ialysos, homeland of the famous ancient boxer Diagoras of Rhodes; the municipal unit consists of the surrounding areas. While official sources use Trianta as a name for the town, Ialysos for the whole municipal unit, unofficial usage tend to favour Ialysos to describe both the modern town and the municipal unit; until the mid-1980s Trianta/Ialysos was a village with a population of around 2500 people, but during the following years population grew to an official 10,107 at the 2001 census, as it to an increasing degree became a suburban district to the town of Rhodes.
Ialysos has in addition become a tourist destination, with several hotels and resorts located on the coast in the new settlement of Ixia, situated between the towns of Ialysos and Rhodes. Being on the windward north-western coast of the island, it is a noted location for wind-surfing; the municipal unit has a land area of the smallest of any on Rhodes. State facilities by category: Primary Education: 3 primary schools Secondary Education: 1 high school and 1 lyceum Town football team GAS Ialysos competes at national level third tier while in the 90s team competed at Beta Ethniki losing promotion to Greece's top league during 1994-95 season. GAS Ialysos competes on local league but in the past reached national league C. Town municipal "Ekonomideio" stadium hosts Ialysos indoor hall basketball. Timocreon poet Diagoras of Rhodes boxer Ialysos Official website Temple of Athena Polias at Ialysus Museum of mineralogy & paleontology Stamatiadis
Dodecanese
The Dodecanese are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor, of which 26 are inhabited. Τhis island group defines the eastern limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the wider Southern Sporades island group; the most important and well-known island, has been the area's dominant island since antiquity. Of the others and Patmos are the more important. Other islands in the chain include Alimia, Chalki, Gyali, Levitha, Nimos, Saria, Strongyli and Telendos; the name "Dodecanese", meaning "The Twelve Islands", denotes today an island group in the southeastern Aegean Sea, comprising fifteen major islands and 93 smaller islets. Since Antiquity, these islands formed part of the group known as the "Southern Sporades"; the name Dōdekanēsos first appears in Byzantine sources in the 8th century, as a naval command under a droungarios, encompassing the southern Aegean Sea, which evolved into the Theme of Samos. However it was not applied to the current island group, but to the twelve Cyclades islands clustered around Delos.
The name may indeed be of far earlier date, modern historians suggest that a list of 12 islands given by Strabo was the origin of the term. The term remained in use throughout the medieval period and was still used for the Cyclades in both colloquial usage and scholarly Greek-language literature until the 18th century; the transfer of the name to the present-day Dodecanese has its roots in the Ottoman period. Following the Ottoman conquest in 1522, the two larger islands and Kos, came under direct Ottoman rule, while the others, of which the twelve main islands were named, enjoyed extensive privileges pertaining to taxation and self-government. Concerted attempts to abolish these privileges were made after 1869, as the Ottoman Empire attempted to modernize and centralize its administrative structure, the last vestiges of the old privileges were abolished after the Young Turks took power in 1908, it was at that time that the press in the independent Kingdom of Greece began referring to the twelve privileged islands in the context of their attempts to preserve their privileges, collectively as the "Dodecanese".
Shortly after, in 1912, most of the Southern Sporades were captured by the Italians in the Italo-Turkish War, except for Ikaria, which joined Greece in 1912 during the First Balkan War, Kastellorizo, which came under Italian rule only in 1921. The place of the latter two was taken by Kos and Rhodes, bringing the number of the major islands under Italian rule back to twelve. Thus, when the Greek press began agitating for the cession of the islands to Greece in 1913, the term used was still the "Dodecanese"; the Italian occupation authorities helped to establish the term when they named the islands under their control "Rhodes and the Dodecanese", adding Leipsoi to the list of the major islands to make up for considering Rhodes separately. By 1920, the name had become established for the entire island group, a fact acknowledged by the Italian government when it appointed the islands' first civilian governor, Count Carlo Senni, as "Viceroy of the Dodecanese"; as the name was associated with Greek irredentism, from 1924 Mussolini's Fascist regime tried to abolish its use by referring to them as the "Italian Islands of the Aegean", but this name never acquired any wider currency outside Italian administrative usage.
The islands joined Greece in 1947 following as the "Governorate-General of the Dodecanese", since 1955 the "Dodecanese Prefecture". The Dodecanese have been inhabited since prehistoric times. In the Neopalatial period on Crete, the islands were Minoanized. Following the downfall of the Minoans, the islands were ruled by the Mycenaean Greeks from circa 1400 BC, until the arrival of the Dorians circa 1100 BC, it is in the Dorian period that they began to prosper as an independent entity, developing a thriving economy and culture through the following centuries. By the early Archaic period Rhodes and Kos emerged as the major islands in the group, in the 6th century BC the Dorians founded three major cities on Rhodes. Together with the island of Kos and the cities of Knidos and Halicarnassos on the mainland of Asia Minor, these made up the Dorian Hexapolis; this development was interrupted around 499 BC by the Persian Wars, during which the islands were captured by the Persians for a brief period.
Following the defeat of the Persians by the Athenians in 478 BC, the cities joined the Athenian-dominated Delian League. When the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, they remained neutral although they were still members of the League. By the time the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC, the Dodecanese were removed from the larger Aegean conflicts, had begun a period of relative quiet and prosperity. In 408 BC, the three cities of Rhodes had united to form one state, which built a new capital on the northern end of the island named Rhodes.
Afantou
Afantou is a village and a former municipality on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rhodes, of which it is a municipal unit, it is situated on the east coast of Rhodes just south of the resort town Faliraki. From a total population of 6,911 6,072 reside in Afantou town; the only other towns are the village of the resort Kolympia. The municipal unit hosts the only golf course of the island, the Afantou-Golf, next to one of the longest beaches on the island; the municipal unit has a land area of 46.100 km². In 1996, the Music School of Rhodes was transferred from Therme to Afantou due to housing problems for the school whilst it was situated in Therme
Rhodes
Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, part of the South Aegean administrative region; the principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes. The city of Rhodes had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011, it is located northeast of southeast of Athens and just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey. Rhodes' nickname is The island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who once conquered the land. Rhodes was famous worldwide for the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe; the name of the U. S. state of Rhode Island is thought to be based on this island. The island has been known as Ρόδος in Greek throughout its history. In addition, the island has been called Rodi in Italian, Rodos in Turkish, Rodi or Rodes in Ladino.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville incorrectly reports that Rhodes was called "Collosus", through a conflation of the Colossus of Rhodes and Paul's Epistle to the Colossians, which refers to Colossae. The island's name might be derived from erod, Phoenician for snake, since the island was infested with snakes in antiquity; the island of Rhodes is shaped like a spearhead, 79.7 km long and 38 km wide, with a total area of 1,400 square kilometres and a coastline of 220 km. Limestone is the main bedrock; the city of Rhodes is located at the northern tip of the island, as well as the site of the ancient and modern commercial harbours. The main air gateway is located 14 km to the southwest of the city in Paradisi; the road network radiates from the city along the west coasts. Outside of the city of Rhodes, the island is dotted with small villages and spa resorts, among them Faliraki, Kremasti, Pefkos, Afantou, Koskinou, Embona and Trianta. There are mineral-rich spring water used to give medicinal baths and the spa resorts offer various health treatments.
Rhodes is situated 363 km east-south-east from the Greek mainland, 18 km from the southern shore of Turkey. The interior of the island is mountainous, sparsely inhabited and covered with forests of pine and cypress. While the shores are rocky, the island has arable strips of land where citrus fruit, wine grapes, vegetables and other crops are grown; the Rhodian population of fallow deer was found to be genetically distinct in 2005, to be of urgent conservation concern. In Petaloudes Valley, large numbers of tiger moths gather during the summer months. Mount Attavyros, at 1,216 metres, is the island's highest point of elevation. Earthquakes include the 226 BC earthquake. On 15 July 2008, Rhodes was struck by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake causing minor damage to a few old buildings and one death. Rhodes has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate; the island was inhabited in the Neolithic period. In the 16th century BC, the Minoans came to Rhodes. Greek mythology recalled a Rhodian race called the Telchines and associated the island of Rhodes with Danaus.
In the 15th century BC, Mycenaean Greeks invaded. After the Bronze Age collapse, the first renewed outside contacts were with Cyprus. Homer mentions. In the 8th century BC, the island's settlements started to form, with the coming of the Dorians, who built the three important cities of Lindos and Kameiros, which together with Kos and Halicarnassus made up the so-called Dorian Hexapolis. In Pindar's ode, the island was said to be born of the union of Helios the sun god and the nymph Rhodos, the cities were named for their three sons; the rhoda is a pink hibiscus, native to the island. Diodorus Siculus added that one of the sons of Helios and Rhode, travelled to Egypt, he taught the Egyptians astrology. In the second half of the 8th century, the sanctuary of Athena received votive gifts that are markers for cultural contacts: small ivories from the Near East and bronze objects from Syria. At Kameiros on the northwest coast, a former Bronze Age site, where the temple was founded in the 8th century, there is another notable contemporaneous sequence of carved ivory figurines.
The cemeteries of Kameiros and Ialyssos yielded several exquisite exemplars of the Orientalizing Rhodian jewellery, dated in the 7th and early 6th centuries BC. Phoenician presence on the island at Ialysos is attested in traditions recorded much by Rhodian historians; the Persians invaded and overran the island, but they were in turn defeated by forces from Athens in 478 BC. The Rhodian cities joined the Athenian League; when the Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 BC, Rhodes remained neutral, although it remained a member of the League. The war lasted until 404 BC, but by this time Rhodes had withdrawn from the conflict and decided to go her own way. In 408 BC, the cities united to form one territory, they built the city of a new capital on the northern end of the island. Its regular plan w
Petaloudes
Petaloudes is a former municipality on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rhodes, of which it is a municipal unit, its population was 14,962 in 2011. It includes the villages of Kremasti, Theologos, Damatria and Pastida; the seat of the municipality was in Kremasti. The land area is 89.150 km². The Petaloudes Valley is home to thousands of the Rhodes subspecies of the Jersey Tiger Moth that cover the entire landscape after the wet season due to the high humidity in the area; the Oriental Sweetgum trees in Petaloudes Valley give off a scent that attracts the moths and creates a unique biotope. Owing to the increased number of visitors, the Euplagia are facing population issues as they have no stomach and when disturbed tend to fly and thus deplete their energy; the valley of the butterflies
Archangelos, Rhodes
Archangelos is a town and a former municipality on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Rhodes, of which it is a municipal unit. Archangelos is located about 30 kilometers south of the town of Rhodes on the island's east coast at an elevation of 160 meters, its population according to the 2011 census was 5,384 making it the fifth largest town of the island (after the capital Rhodes, the town of Trianta and Afantou. The town's name derives from Archangel Michael, considered its patron; the municipal unit of Archangelos has a land area of 115.375 km², includes several other towns, the largest of which are Malónas and Másari. Its total population was 7,615 at the 2011 census. Numerous small settlements existed in the broader area of Archangelos during the Hellenistic era, others on the coast and others inland. After the 7th century AD the settlements near the coast were abandoned due to the frequent invasions of pirates and their inhabitants settled on existing inland settlements or founded new ones in more secure areas.
Over time the various settlements of the area were merged in one forming the town of Archangelos. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Knights Hospitaller who were occupying the island of Rhodes since 1309, built a fortress on top of one of the town's nearby hills to protect from a possible Ottoman invasion on the island. Ruins of this fortress remain today. Major economic resources include tourism, agriculture and pottery. Pottery was always one of the major occupations of the people of Archangelos, it is said. In: church of the Saint Michael ArchangelNearby: castle of Saint George ruins cave of Koumellos Haraki Stegna, Rhodes Tsambika
Regional units of Greece
The 74 regional units are administrative units of Greece. They are subdivisions of the country's 13 regions, further subdivided into municipalities, they were introduced as part of the "Kallikratis" administrative reform on 1 January 2011 and are comparable in area and, in the mainland, coterminous with the pre-"Kallikratis" prefectures of Greece
Media related to Attavyros at Wikimedia Commons
