The Inn of Provence

Identity

Site & dates

Street of the Knights (Odos Ippoton), upper reach, Collachium › near the loge and the Palace of the Grand Master

The Inn (Auberge) of Provence — in Greek, Πανδοχείο της Προβηγκίας — stands on the Street of the Knights, in its upper reach, a little higher up the street than the Inn of France and nearer the loge and the Palace of the Grand Master. The name by which the standing building is known today should be used with caution: the archival historian Jean-Bernard de Vaivre opens his study of the building with a direct correction of popular belief, and this document reports that distinction throughout rather than treat the standing building uncritically as the historic Auberge (see Identity Debate, below).

c. 1390 – 1488, Two Auberges

The Langue de Provence maintains two distinct establishments, “Grande Provence” and “Petite Provence,” divided along a line following the Rhône, each with its own pilier — attested in a 1390 wages-dispute text of Grand Master Juan Fernández de Heredia and again in Order council lists of 1410 and 1442; the two merge into a single Auberge de Provence before the last two decades of the 15th century.

1480–1488, Siege, Earthquake & Aubusson's Bull

The Ottoman siege of 1480 and the earthquake of 1481 badly damage the auberge's buildings; Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson's bull of 15 January 1488, read at that year's chapter at Arles, compels the priories of Saint-Gilles and Toulouse to fund restoration through a quarter-deduction from commandery revenues.

1504–1508, Rochechinard Rebuilds Petite Provence

The 1488 works remaining unfinished, Grand Master Émery d'Amboise renews the restoration order in 1504 with fr. Charles Aleman de Rochechinard and fr. Jean de Renguis; Rochechinard funds and rebuilds the Petite Provence wing from his own revenue on the Bank of Saint-Georges, confirmed by the 1507 chapter-general, with an arms-stone dated 1508.

1518, The Toulouse-Priory Wing

A further wing, belonging to the Priory of Toulouse, is built by fr. François (or, per the Order's own administrative record, fr. Pierre) Flote; its portal and heraldic caisson survive today as the only confirmed medieval fabric of the historic Auberge de Provence.

1522–1912, Withdrawal, Rottiers & the 1856 Explosion

Following the Order's withdrawal from Rhodes in 1522/23, the fate of the auberge's fabric goes undocumented; the traveller Gustave Rottiers records a since-destroyed wing near the loge in January 1826; the 1856 gunpowder-magazine explosion further damages this part of the street.

1912 – Present, Italian Reconstruction

The standing building shown to visitors is substantially reconstructed by Italian-period architects in the final years of the 1910s and through the 1920s, incorporating the surviving 1518 portal into an otherwise new structure; the Dodecanese passes to Greek state jurisdiction in 1947/48.

Identity Debate

Not the building where the knights gathered

Popular attribution › Jean-Bernard de Vaivre's 2009 correction

The building presented to visitors today as the Auberge de Provence is not, on Jean-Bernard de Vaivre's archival evidence, the historic building where the Langue's knights actually gathered. This project reports that correction plainly, as it has elsewhere for this street's other contested attributions, rather than present a largely twentieth-century structure as a substantially medieval survival.

Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, 2009

Opens his study of the building with a direct correction of popular belief: the building presented to visitors as the Auberge de Provence “n’est pas celui où… se rassemblaient les chevaliers de cette Langue” (is not the one where the knights of this Langue actually gathered).

Only the 1518 portal survives

Of the standing complex, only the portal and heraldic caisson of the Priory of Toulouse's wing are genuine surviving medieval fabric; “tout le reste de la façade et du complet édifice” (all the rest of the façade and of the complete building), Vaivre writes, “date de la fin des décennies 1910/1920.”

The Italian-period reconstruction

Built, in Vaivre's own assessment, “très bien et intelligemment” by unnamed Italian-period architects imitating the style of other genuinely medieval buildings in the town, documented directly by a series of surviving contemporary photographs.

A building displaced, not demolished

The true historic Auberge — described by the 16th-century historian Bosio as “un bello, e commodo Palagio” — does not survive above ground; its only other physical trace, beyond the 1518 portal, is a displaced 1508 arms-stone now in the Rhodes Archaeological Museum's lapidary collection (see Fabric, below).

A further identification puzzle attaches to the 1518 portal's own patron: its inscription names fr. François Flote, prior of Toulouse, as builder, but the Order's own administrative record of his career, per Vaivre's account, instead calls him fr. Pierre Flote. This document reports the discrepancy as it stands in the source rather than resolve it silently in favour of either name.

Fabric

The 1518 portal and its caisson

Pointed arch, marble inscription & cruciform caisson › the one confirmed medieval survival

The surviving 1518 portal is a pointed arch set within a rectangular frame, its extrados carrying a marble inscription naming the wing's builder; above the frame, a cruciform caisson holds four sculpted escutcheons. This element aside, the standing building's fabric dates from the final years of the 1910s and the 1920s, on the evidence of a series of contemporary photographs, and imitates the architectural vocabulary of other genuinely medieval buildings in the town.

The portal

A pointed Gothic arch set within a rectangular stone frame, its extrados inscribed “R[eve]ndvs. Dns. F. Francisvs Flota Prior Tholose Constrvxit Anno 1.5.18,” dated 1518.

The heraldic caisson

A cruciform caisson above the portal bears four sculpted escutcheons, of which three are identified in the sources consulted for this document: at the top, the arms of France moderne, crowned; to one side, the arms of the Religion quartered with those of Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto; to the other, the arms of the Flote family, a mouton naissant on a chief of the Religion, already borne a century and a half earlier by fr. Bertran Flote, grand commandeur under Heredia; the fourth escutcheon's blazon is not separately specified in the sources consulted.

Rochechinard's arms-stone

A displaced spolia, now in the Rhodes Archaeological Museum's lapidary collection, blazoned quarterly — 1st and 4th semé of fleurs-de-lis on a bend, 2nd and 3rd on a chief a lion armed, langued, membered and crowned — marking the Petite Provence wing rebuilt by fr. Charles Aleman de Rochechinard and carved in 1508; no fabric of that wing is otherwise confirmed to survive.

A possible further wing near the loge

In January 1826 the traveller Gustave Rottiers recorded entering the courtyard of a building recently destroyed by a lightning-caused fire, further west along the street nearer the loge, where chimneys still bore the arms of the Order combined with those of Jerusalem — tentatively associated by Vaivre with a further wing of the Auberge de Provence, and more probably still, with Rochechinard's own wing.

No architect is named in the sources consulted for this document for either historic wing of the true Auberge de Provence; the Italian-period reconstruction of the 1910s–1920s is likewise attributed only generically, in Vaivre's account, to unnamed “architectes italiens.”

History

1390–1948

Two auberges › one Hospitaller Langue's institutional record

The Inn of Provence's documented history opens with two separate 14th-century auberges, runs through their merger, two successive post-1480 restoration orders, the Toulouse-priory wing's 1518 enlargement, four centuries of undocumented Ottoman-period history, and a twentieth-century reconstruction that gave the standing building its present, largely modern form.

c. 1390, Two Auberges Attested

A wages-dispute text of Grand Master Juan Fernández de Heredia names fr. André du Marais (Andreas de Palude) as having held the “albergia Parve Provincie” and fr. Manuel de Vintimille as its pilier — the earliest documented reference to either Provençal auberge by name.

1410–1442, Grande & Petite Provence

An Order council list of 1410 names fr. Pierre d'Arpajon and fr. Pierre de Galbert, commander of Arles, as piliers of Grande and Petite Provence respectively; fr. Pierre Prunet still holds the Grande Provence office in 1442; the two auberges, standing geographically close together, merge into a single Auberge de Provence before the last two decades of the 15th century.

1480–1488, Siege, Earthquake & Aubusson's Bull

The great Ottoman siege of 1480 and the earthquake of 1481 badly damage the auberge's buildings; after voluntary contributions stall, Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson issues a bull on 15 January 1488, read at that year's chapter at Arles, compelling the priories of Saint-Gilles and Toulouse to fund restoration through a quarter-deduction from commandery revenues.

1504–1508, Amboise's Renewed Order & Rochechinard's Wing

By 1504 the 1488 works remain unfinished; Grand Master Émery d'Amboise, with fr. Charles Aleman de Rochechinard, prior of Saint-Gilles, and fr. Jean de Renguis, prior of Toulouse, issues a further, more precisely itemised restoration tax; Rochechinard funds and rebuilds the Petite Provence wing from the revenue of 400 “loquis” he holds on the Bank of Saint-Georges, confirmed by the 1507 chapter-general, with an arms-stone carved in 1508.

1518, The Toulouse-Priory Wing's Portal

A further wing, belonging to the Priory of Toulouse, is built still later by fr. François (or, per the Order's administrative record, fr. Pierre) Flote, bailli of Manosque 1503–1510, grand commandeur 1510–1514 and prior of Toulouse from 1514 until his death near 14 April 1519; its portal survives today as the only confirmed medieval fabric of the complex.

1522–1912, Withdrawal, Rottiers & the 1856 Explosion

Following the Order's withdrawal from Rhodes in 1522/23, the fate of the historic auberge's fabric is not detailed in the sources consulted for this document; in January 1826 Gustave Rottiers records a since-destroyed wing near the loge; the 1856 gunpowder-magazine explosion causes further severe damage to buildings in this part of the street.

1912 – Present, Italian Reconstruction & Transfer

The building presented to visitors today — incorporating the surviving 1518 Flote portal into an otherwise new structure — is substantially built by Italian-period architects in the final years of the 1910s and through the 1920s; following the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy, the Dodecanese passes to Greek state jurisdiction in 1947/48.

This document's Person and Event History also traces three 14th-century Grand Masters of the Order's then-undivided Langue de Provence — fr. Foulques de Villaret, fr. Hélion de Villeneuve and fr. Dieudonné de Gozon — each predating, by decades, the earliest documentary trace of the Langue's own separate auberge (c. 1390) discussed above, and none connected in the sources consulted to the auberge building itself (see Story, below).

Testimony

Eye witness: a correction and its evidence

1629–2009 › three centuries of testimony on one Provençal auberge

“...se rassemblaient les chevaliers de cette Langue”

Jean-Bernard de Vaivre's opening correction of popular belief about the building shown to visitors today as the Auberge de Provence: it is not the one where the knights of this Langue actually gathered.

Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, “Sur quelques monuments de Rhodes,” Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2009.

“très bien et intelligemment construit”

Vaivre's own assessment of the standing building's fabric beyond the 1518 portal: very well and intelligently built by the Italian-period architects, imitating the style of the town's genuinely medieval buildings.

Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, “Sur quelques monuments de Rhodes,” Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2009.

“un bello, e commodo Palagio”

The 16th-century historian Bosio's description of the true historic Auberge de Provence — a beautiful and comfortable Palace — built for the public benefit of the Langue's knights and for the comfort of the Priors of Saint-Gilles resident after him.

Giacomo Bosio, Dell'Istoria della sacra Religione et illustrissima militia di S. Giovanni Gierosolimitano, 1629, cited via de Vaivre 2009.

“F. Francisvs Flota Prior Tholose Constrvxit Anno 1.5.18”

The portal's own extrados inscription, naming its builder and its date — the one element of the entire complex independently confirmed, by Vaivre's study, to survive from the medieval period.

Inscription, 1518 portal, Priory-of-Toulouse wing, Auberge de Provence; transcribed by de Vaivre, 2009.

Story

Four scenes from an underfunded restoration

1488–1920s › a narrative reconstruction for visitors

A dramatised account, written for visitor interpretation and drawing on the building's own fabric and documented archival record (see History and Testimony, above). It is a narrative device, not a literal historical record.

The bull is read at Arles, 1488

The chapter-general of Arles falls silent as Pierre d'Aubusson's bull is read aloud: a quarter of every commandery's revenue, Saint-Gilles and Toulouse alike, is to go toward rebuilding what the siege and the earthquake tore down. Some commanders murmur at the cost. The Grand Master's own words leave no room for it — the auberge is not only the knights' hostel, but the roof under which their own priors will one day sleep.

Dramatisation, after Pierre d'Aubusson's bull of 15 January 1488, quoted by Vaivre from the Order's archives.

Rochechinard's declaration, 1507

Charles Aleman de Rochechinard stands before the chapter-general and names his own sum: four hundred shares on the Bank of Saint-Georges, their revenue his to give, and he gives it here, to the wing that bears his family's name for whoever comes after him as prior of Saint-Gilles. The stone mason will not finish the arms until the following year. The chapter confirms the gift the same day it is spoken.

Dramatisation, after the 1507 chapter-general's confirmation of Rochechinard's funding, reported by de Vaivre 2009.

Flote raises the portal, 1518

The last stone of the arch goes in above the new door, and the mason cuts the date into the frame: 1518. Above it, four shields will soon be set — the King of France's own lilies, crowned; the Order's cross quartered with a reigning Grand Master's; and his own family's leaping mouton, the same device his kinsman Bertran bore beside Heredia's a century and a half before him. He will not see another year.

Dramatisation, after the 1518 portal inscription and Vaivre's account of fr. François/Pierre Flote's career and 1519 death.

The Italian architects rebuild, 1920s

Around the old portal — the one piece of the wall that has not moved in four hundred years — the new stone rises, coursed and dressed to match its medieval neighbours so closely that, within a decade, almost no one walking the street will be able to tell where the old work ends and the new begins. No name is recorded for the architects who do it. The portal alone will still be able to say, a century later, what is truly theirs to claim.

Dramatisation, after de Vaivre's account of the building's 1910s–1920s Italian-period reconstruction.

Gallery

Photo gallery

Four views › the Inn of Provence, its 1518 portal, and its Italian-period reconstruction

Assessment

Significance criteria

Nine-criteria framework › International importance

Rarity

The 1518 portal and its heraldic caisson are a rare, securely dated survival directly naming both a patron (fr. François/Pierre Flote) and a reigning Grand Master (Fabrizio del Carretto); the associated Rochechinard arms-stone is a comparably rare, if displaced, survival of the earlier Petite Provence wing. The building's twentieth-century reconstruction is, by contrast, unremarkable among the Medieval Town's Italian-period restorations, and this document does not claim rarity for that later fabric.

High

Representativeness

The historic Auberge's documented two-part origin — separate Grande and Petite Provence establishments merging into one — and its combination of a national hostel with the residence of visiting priors are highly representative of the Order's Langue system in its earlier form; its long, twice-ordered and repeatedly underfunded post-1480 restoration is equally representative of the Order's chronic difficulty financing reconstruction in this period, a pattern this project's Statement of Significance for the Inn of England documents independently.

High

Aesthetic value

The 1518 portal and its four-shield cruciform caisson are of considerable aesthetic and heraldic interest in their own right; no aesthetic assessment can be made of the historic Petite Provence wing, which survives in no visual record beyond a single displaced arms-stone, and the surrounding twentieth-century fabric, however competently executed, is not treated here as an aesthetic asset of the historic monument.

High

Integrity

Assessed as low for the historic Auberge de Provence: on the evidence of the sources consulted for this document, only the 1518 portal survives from the medieval complex, with the remainder of the standing building dating from a 1910s–1920s reconstruction. This document reports that gap plainly, in line with this project's practice of correcting, rather than repeating, popular attributions it cannot confirm.

Low

Historical value

High historical value for what the building reveals, through documentary rather than architectural evidence, about the Langue de Provence's institutional development — from two separate 14th-century auberges to a single merged establishment, through repeated post-1480 restoration efforts under two Grand Masters, to its final medieval enlargement in 1518.

Exceptional

Symbolic, spiritual & social value

As the Langue de Provence's national hostel and the shared residence of its priors, the historic auberge carried strong institutional and social meaning; the adoption of the Jerusalem cross as the Langue's own emblem, visible on the arms Rottiers recorded in 1826, further underlines its symbolic self-identification with the Order's crusading origins.

High

Scientific value

Significant open questions remain for further research: the precise location and full extent of the historic Petite and Grande Provence wings relative to the standing building; the unresolved inconsistency between the 1518 inscription's “François Flote” and the Order's own administrative record of “Pierre Flote”; and the identity of the building recorded by Rottiers in 1826, which Vaivre can only tentatively associate with Rochechinard's wing.

High

Interpretive potential

The standing building's largely twentieth-century fabric creates a genuine interpretive risk — that visitors will take the reconstruction for an unbroken medieval survival — which strong on-site or published interpretation, of the kind attempted in this Statement, could readily correct.

Moderate

Importance level

Resting on the surviving 1518 portal and displaced 1508 arms-stone's documentation of the Langue de Provence's institutional history at Rhodes across nearly a century and a half, and on the building's own status as an instructive case study in the Italian-period reconstruction of the Medieval Town.

International

Statement of significance

“n’est pas celui où… se rassemblaient les chevaliers de cette Langue” (Jean-Bernard de Vaivre's opening correction of popular belief about the building presented today as the Auberge de Provence, 2009.)

Provence held the Grand Commandery, the Order's central treasury and logistics department, and its own pilier acted as the Grand Master's financial deputy — a natural pairing, since Provençal and Languedocian commanderies were among the wealthiest in the Order's European estate, and the Langue's revenue underwrote much of the ordinary running of the Convent, from garrison pay to the upkeep of the fortifications. Provence was also, in a real sense, the founding Langue of Hospitaller Rhodes: fr. Foulques de Villaret, the Grand Master who led the conquest of Rhodes in 1306, was Provençal, and his immediate successors who consolidated that conquest, fr. Hélion de Villeneuve and fr. Dieudonné de Gozon, were Provençal knights in turn. A fourth Provençal Grand Master, Raymond Bérenger, is named alongside them in the source material consulted for this document; this project reports that name as it stands in the source, though no Raymond Bérenger otherwise appears among the Grand Masters documented in this document's own Person and Event History, above.

The Inn (Auberge) of Provence, on the Street of the Knights in the Collachium of the Medieval Town of Rhodes, is a case study in the difference between popular attribution and documented history. The building shown to visitors today under this name incorporates only one confirmed medieval element — the 1518 portal and heraldic caisson built for the Priory of Toulouse's wing — set within an otherwise twentieth-century, Italian-period reconstruction of the 1910s and 1920s.

The building's earlier, documented history is itself richly institutional: two separate 14th-century auberges, Grande and Petite Provence, merging before 1488; two successive restoration orders, by Grand Masters Pierre d'Aubusson and Émery d'Amboise, after the 1480 siege and 1481 earthquake; and fr. Charles Aleman de Rochechinard's funding, from his own revenue on the Bank of Saint-Georges, of the Petite Provence wing's rebuilding — a wing that, like its companion, does not survive above ground, its only trace a displaced 1508 arms-stone now held in the Rhodes Archaeological Museum.

Taken together, the Langue de Provence's institutional seniority and hold on the Order's Grand Commandery, the building's documented two-auberge origin and twice-ordered post-1480 restoration, its one securely dated medieval survival in the 1518 Flote portal, and its own status as an instructive modern case study in the Italian-period reconstruction of the Medieval Town together give the Inn of Provence significance of International importance, as one of the Street of the Knights' more historiographically instructive, if physically much-reconstructed, monuments.

National

Hellenic Republic: ΥΑ 23084/737/25-8-1948 — ΦΕΚ 10/23-9-1948 (Ministerial Decision declaring the monuments of the Medieval Town of Rhodes, including the Street of the Knights and its Inns, protected under Greek Archaeological Law), subsequently confirmed under Law 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in General.

UNESCO

World Heritage property: Medieval City of Rhodes (ref. 493), inscribed 1988, meeting criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). The Inn of Provence, together with the Street of the Knights, the Great Hospital of the Knights, the Palace of the Grand Master and the wider fortification circuit, is a contributing component of the property.

References

Bosio, Giacomo. Dell'Istoria della sacra Religione et illustrissima militia di S. Giovanni Gierosolimitano. Parte seconda, Rome, 1629, t. II, p. 599. Cited by de Vaivre (2009) for the historic Auberge de Provence’s dual function as national hostel and priors’ residence; consulted here via that secondary citation.
de Vaivre, Jean-Bernard. “Sur quelques monuments de Rhodes.” Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (CRAI) 153e année, N.1 (2009): 323–387, esp. 329–339 (“L'auberge de Provence”). DOI 10.3406/crai.2009.92477. The principal source consulted for this document; identifies the standing building’s Italian-period reconstruction and reconstructs the historic auberge’s documentary history from the Order’s own archives.
Gabriel, Albert. La Cité De Rhodes, Mcccx–mdxxii: Topographie, Architecture Militaire. Architecture civile et religieuse. Paris: Geuthner, 1921.
Hellenic Government Gazette (ΦΕΚ). Ministerial Decision 23084/737 (25 August 1948), ΦΕΚ 10 (23 September 1948), declaring the monuments of the Medieval Town of Rhodes protected; Law 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in General.
ICOMOS Australia. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 2013.
ICOMOS. ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Paris: ICOMOS, 2008.
Note on fr. Hélion de Villeneuve and fr. Dieudonné de Gozon (Grand Masters, 1319–1346 and 1346–1353): their biographical details in this document’s Person and Event History reflect general, widely attested Hospitaller historiography rather than the de Vaivre (2009) study; this project has not independently verified them against a specific primary or scholarly source, and the traditional “dragon of Rhodes” story attributed to Gozon is treated by modern historians as legendary rather than factual.
Raybaud, Jean. Histoire des Grands-Prieurs et du Prieuré de Saint-Gilles. Nîmes, 1905, t. II, p. 33. An 18th-century manuscript history, edited posthumously in the early 20th century; cited by de Vaivre (2009) for the 1481 earthquake damage and the 1488 restoration levy, and consulted here via that secondary citation.
REBOOT Statement of Significance: Bastion del Carretto, Rhodes (2026) — cross-referenced for the biography of Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto, whose arms appear on the Inn of Provence’s 1518 caisson.
REBOOT Statement of Significance: Inn of England, Rhodes (2026) — cross-referenced for a parallel, independently documented pattern of repeated, underfunded restoration levies on Langue commanderies following the 1480 siege and 1481 earthquake.
REBOOT: Statement of Significance Inn of France, Rhodes (2026) — cross-referenced for the 1483 dispute between fr. Pierre Papefust’s “magasin de la chapelle de France” and the Langue de Provence’s neighbouring property, documented there in full from the opposing side.
REBOOT: Statement of Significance Street of the Knights, Rhodes (2026) — cross-referenced for the Inn of Provence’s place among the street’s other national Inns and for its general architectural description.
Rottiers, Gustave. Cited by de Vaivre (2009) for a January 1826 eyewitness account of a since-destroyed wing near the loge bearing the combined arms of the Order and of Jerusalem, tentatively associated with the historic Auberge de Provence; consulted here only via that secondary citation, this project having no independent access to Rottiers’s own published work.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Medieval City of Rhodes.” World Heritage List, ref. 493. Inscribed 1988.