Castellania

Identity

Site & dates

Ippokratous Square › harbour end of the Hospitaller Borgo, reached via Aristotelous Street

The building traditionally known as the Castellania occupies the eastern end of Ippokratous (Hippocrates) Square, at the harbour edge of the Hospitaller Borgo — the merchants’ and townspeople’s quarter south of the fortified Collachium. Its principal, west-facing façade and monumental external staircase thrust into the square itself, while its rear (north-east) side is built into the town’s harbour-front sea wall. Dated by its own sculpted heraldry to 1507, it is traditionally identified as the office and court of the Hospitaller castellan, though this identification is disputed by specialist scholarship (see §01, below).

1507

Built under Grand Master Émery d’Amboise, per its own sculpted heraldry; arms of the knight Jacques Aymer and of Bailli Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam added on the same façade.

1522–1924

Converted under Ottoman rule to a ground-floor fish market with the small mosque of the Bejesten Jami installed above; progressively buried beneath market shops for four centuries.

1925–1935

Restored by the Italian colonial administration of the Dodecanese under the architect Florestano di Fausto, following the building’s exposure by the 1924 Old Town market fire.

1947–present

Public Library of Rhodes and Historical and Folklore Archive of the Dodecanese, following the Dodecanese’s 1947–48 transfer from Italy to Greece.

Identity Debate

Whose Castellania?

1356–2013 › an institution, a building, and a genuinely open question

The castellania, as an institution — the office and court of the Hospitaller castellan, responsible for urban justice and administration, with attached prison facilities — is independently and securely documented from the mid-fourteenth century, more than a century before the standing building’s own 1507 construction. Whether the standing Ippokratous Square building is, in fact, that institution’s historical seat is a genuinely open scholarly question. The historian Jean-Bernard de Vaivre argues, on detailed archival and topographical grounds, that the documented châtellenie must be situated instead near the Marine Gate, inside the fortified Collachium. The architect Katerina Manoussou-Della goes further still, identifying the standing building as the distinct Hospitaller institution of the commercium (Commercial Court), and locating the true judicial castellania near the site of the Order’s first Hospital of 1311. A third, independent lead in the Italian Ephorate’s own 1930s photographic archive points to yet a further candidate site, on Sokratous Street.

None of this disputes the building itself

No scholarship disputes the standing building’s own construction date of 1507 or its d’Amboise-period heraldry; the dispute concerns only which Hospitaller-period institution it actually housed, and where the judicial castellania named in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources truly stood.

Retained by this Statement

This Statement concerns the building officially designated, administered and popularly known today as the Castellania, while recording transparently that its identification with the judicial institution of that name is disputed by more than one line of specialist scholarship.

A sculpted marble coat of arms flanked by carved angel supporters, set within a Gothic flamboyant arch with fleur-de-lys finials, on the building's first-floor facade — The sculpted arms of Grand Master Émery d’Amboise, 1507 — the one part of the building’s identity that is not in dispute.

Fabric

What survives

Ground floor and piano nobile › a plan without an internal stair

The standing building comprises a ground floor of two large arched shops or warehouses opening onto the square through an open loggia, adorned by two semicircular cross-vaults, and an upper floor reached only by the exterior staircase — a plan without any internal, ground-to-first-floor stair, consistent with a ground floor let or used independently of the institution housed above. Its present exterior form is substantially the product of the 1925–1935 Italian restoration, whose fidelity to the Hospitaller-period original has not been independently verified for this document.

The exterior staircase and the “Cellar of the Knights”

A broad stone staircase, likened by the SATI record sheet to Aegean-island domestic staircases, rises from the square to the first-floor entrance; the vaulted space beneath it is known today, in library and popular usage, as the “Cellar of the Knights.”

The first-floor window and the 1507 heraldry

A large window divided into four lights by a marble cross with fleur-de-lys finials, set in a Gothic flamboyant arch, with the sculpted arms of Grand Master Émery d’Amboise placed beside it amid carved foliate ornament.

The Angel Doorway

A second, Renaissance-profiled doorway further along the terrace carries, on its lintel, the arms of the Order, of d’Amboise, of Bailli Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and of the knight Jacques Aymer, grouped around a carved angel.

Crocodile spouts and painted ceilings

Three stone water-spouts carved as crocodiles — a motif shared with the Inn of the Tongue of France — and, in the upper chamber, a fully intact painted and inlaid ceiling depicting ancient philosophers and the human virtues.

History

Persons & events

1309–1948 › the Borgo, the court, the fire, and the transfer to Greece

The Knights Hospitaller took possession of Rhodes in 1309, dividing the town into the fortified Collachium and the Borgo, the merchants’ and townspeople’s quarter to the south, centred on the “magna et communis platea” — the great and common square on which the standing building was later erected. The building’s own later history is one of repeated functional transformation, from a Hospitaller-period civic building, through Ottoman commercial and religious use, to its present civic role as a public library and archive.

1356–1503, the castellania documented

A “hospicium castellanie” is recorded in 1380 as having housed the castellan’s office, court and prison since 1356; four dated criminal cases (1433–1490) and a professionally staffed judicial apparatus of named judges and notaries corroborate a continuously functioning institution.

1507, construction under Émery d’Amboise

The standing building is dated by its own sculpted heraldry to 1507; its close architectural and heraldic kinship with the Inn of the Tongue of France (1509–1519) has led scholars to speculate, without documentary proof, that the same masons built both.

1522–1924, Ottoman fish market and mosque

Converted after the 1522 conquest to a ground-floor fish market with the Bejesten Jami mosque above; progressively encroached upon by market shops until a 1924 fire exposed the buried Hospitaller fabric.

1925–1935, Florestano di Fausto’s restoration

The Italian colonial administration of the Dodecanese restored the building, clearing later accretions and reinstating its exterior essentially in the form seen today.

1947–48, transfer to Greece

The Treaty of Peace with Italy (10 February 1947) provided for the Dodecanese’s transfer to Greece, taking effect in 1948; since 1947 the building has housed the Public Library of Rhodes and the Historical and Folklore Archive of the Dodecanese.

2009–2013, the location debate renewed

Jean-Bernard de Vaivre (2009) and Katerina Manoussou-Della (2013) independently reopen the question of the castellania’s true historical seat, discussed fully in §01, above.

Testimony

Eye witness

1380–2013 › four documents and a scholar’s own words

A house of the castellania, 1380

A “hospicium castellanie” (house of the castellania) is recorded in 1380 as having, since 1356, housed the office and court of the castellan together with a prison, standing close to the town’s walls and a stair giving access to the wall-walk — the earliest secure documentary trace of the institution the standing building would later be named for.

Archival record of 1380, cited via de Vaivre and Manoussou-Della.

Ninety-seven paces from the Marine Gate, 1480

A detailed 1480 topographical description of the city situates the castellania precisely at the corner of the great Trecenal (shipyard) square, giving paced distances between it and nearby landmarks: from the Marine Gate to the castellania, 97 paces; from the castellania to the house and tower of the Order’s Treasurer, eight towers and 310 paces — a itinerary de Vaivre reads as placing the institution near the Marine Gate, well inside the Collachium.

1480 topographical description, published in detail by Jean-Bernard de Vaivre, 2009.

Pilloried for holding a hand, 1490

In 1490 the Greek Rhodian Anthony Mavros was pilloried, given one hundred lashes, jailed for two months and degraded to metic status — for holding the hand of the Castellan of Trianda to avoid a blow. One of four individually dated criminal cases (1433–1490) presided over personally by successive Grand Masters, documenting the castellania’s judicial activity as an institution, though none can be shown to have been heard inside the standing 1507 building itself.

Hospitaller judicial record, 1490, cross-corroborated in the project’s Heritage Narrative and SATI II documentation.

“Today, wrongly in my opinion”

Synthesising the 1380, 1475, 1477, 1480 and 1491 archival records together with a soldier’s eyewitness account of the 1480 siege, the architect Katerina Manoussou-Della states her own view directly: the standing monumental building on Ippokratous Square is “today, wrongly in my opinion, known as the castellania” — identifying it instead as the Hospitaller-period commercium, the Commercial Court, and proposing that the “Castellania” name migrated from an adjoining gate, already called the “castellania Gate” by 1475.

Katerina Manoussou-Della, “Zones and Nodes of Interaction: The Development of the Hospitaller Town of Rhodes,” 2013.

Story

Justice

Castellania, 1507 › a narrative reconstruction for visitors

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

Crime of Passion

According to the public law, murder is a crime that leads to the death penalty, especially if not committed for reasons of self-defence. On the 20th of October 1433 Grand Master Fluvià acquits the caulker George Kokkinos, who has in fight mortally wounded the Rhodian citizen Cosmas Crussochiris. The Draper of the Order, Ludovico de Galbis, the nobleman Jean de Conpyes and Knight de Gouffry explicitly declare that the act is not pre-meditated and the defendant is set free. On the 22nd of May 1442 Grand Master de Lastic acquits Michael Turquomano from Rhodes, who killed his wife, because she has provoked many scandals. Michael has not premeditated the murder and was a good citizen.

Crime for Profit

Fantino Quirini, Admiral of the Order, is a real merchant of Venice. He does not have any moral inhibitions to deal with the enemy for profit. He buys soap, sugar and pepper from pirates, who have seized the goods from Rhodian ships! Fantino has his own shipyard and rents the ships for commercial profit. On the 1st of February 1449 Grand Master de Lastic is outraged: Admiral Quirini denies food supplies to the Knights in Petroumi, this very bastion of the Christian world in Asia Minor. De Lastic is sending the higher official of the Order, the Castellan of Amposta, John de Villalba, to Kos to find out if Quirini has obeyed the order to supply Petroumi.

Blind Justice

In 1490, to avoid a blow, the Greek Rhodian Anthony Mavros holds the hand of the Castellan of Trianda. Questioning the Order’s authority is not tolerated: attached to a wooden framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, exposed to public mockery, Mavros receives 100 lashes by the bullwhip, goes to jail for two months and is degraded to the class of metics, just a step above the slave.

Court of Law

Being the Court of Law, Castellania lies in the middle of the Medieval Market. On the ground floor survive two arched warehouses and a gallery with cross-vaults. The broad staircase leads into the first floor and the terrace. The arms of Grand Master d’Amboise are on the walls. There is strong similarity between Castellania and the Inn of France in the Street of the Knights. Has Grand Master d’Amboise built both buildings using the same team of masons?

Gallery

Photo gallery

Twelve views › the Castellania, its heraldry, and its life today

Assessment

Significance criteria

Nine-criteria framework › National to International importance

Rarity

A largely intact, richly decorated early-sixteenth-century civic building surviving within the commercial Borgo, rather than the better-preserved Collachium; its concentration of multiple named individuals’ heraldry in a single decorative programme is unusual among surviving Rhodes monuments.

High

Representativeness

Representative of early-sixteenth-century Hospitaller civic architecture in the Borgo and, on the traditional identification, of the Order’s judicial administration — qualified by specialist scholarship disputing whether the building represents the castellania at all, or the distinct commercium.

Moderate to High

Aesthetic value

A flamboyant-Gothic window with marble cross and fleur-de-lys tracery, a Renaissance-profiled angel doorway, and a sculptural programme of heraldry and crocodile water-spouts among the more refined surviving examples of Hospitaller architectural sculpture on Rhodes — reflecting both surviving 1507 fabric and the 1925–1935 restoration.

High

Integrity

Qualified on several grounds: four centuries buried beneath Ottoman-period shopfronts; a standing exterior substantially the product of unverified 1925–1935 restoration; and, most fundamentally, a building whose very identification as “the Castellania” is disputed by specialist scholarship.

Low to Moderate

Historical value

Substantial value both for its own documented 1507 construction and heraldry, and for the well-documented judicial institution traditionally associated with it, spanning four dated criminal cases (1433–1490); further and unusually richly augmented by its status as the focus of a live, well-documented topographical dispute among specialist historians.

High

Symbolic & social value

As the building popularly identified with the Order’s justice and, since 1947, as home to the Public Library of Rhodes and the Historical and Folklore Archive of the Dodecanese, the Castellania carries strong symbolic and social value as a continuous site of public administration and civic life spanning more than five centuries.

High

Scientific value

The subject of active, unresolved scholarly research into its Hospitaller-period institutional identity and the true location of the châtellenie/castellania; its own construction phases also offer research potential for the study of adaptive reuse across four distinct political administrations of Rhodes.

High

Interpretive potential

A single monument through which visitors can trace Hospitaller civic justice, Renaissance sculpture and heraldry, Ottoman-period conversion, Italian restoration and a modern civic afterlife — plus a genuinely live scholarly controversy over its own identity, an unusually accessible way to introduce visitors to how heritage scholarship actually works.

High

Importance level

A contributing component of the UNESCO-inscribed Medieval City of Rhodes, protected under Greek Archaeological Law, and a building of genuine and ongoing interest to international scholarship on the topography and civic institutions of Hospitaller Rhodes.

National to International

Statement of significance

“Castellania.” (traditional identification; also recorded as “Basilica Mercatorum” in some modern documentation)

The Castellania stands at the harbour end of Ippokratous Square, at the heart of the Hospitaller-period Borgo of the UNESCO-listed Medieval City of Rhodes. It is of high historical and scientific value both for its own well-documented construction and decorative programme of 1507 and, unusually among the monuments of Rhodes, as the live subject of an unresolved topographical and institutional debate among specialist historians — a debate that makes the building, and the scholarship surrounding it, a valuable case study in how the historical topography of Hospitaller Rhodes continues to be actively researched and revised. It is of high symbolic and social value as a continuous site of public civic function across more than five centuries, and of high aesthetic value for its sculpted Gothic and early-Renaissance façade. This significance must be assessed together with an honest acknowledgement of the building’s integrity: its present exterior form is substantially the product of the 1925–1935 Italian restoration, whose fidelity to the Hospitaller-period original has not been independently verified for this document, and its very identification with the castellania institution named in its traditional title is contested by credible specialist scholarship. Notwithstanding these qualifications, taken together the Castellania merits an Importance Level of National to International significance: a contributing component of the UNESCO-inscribed Medieval City of Rhodes, protected under Greek Archaeological Law, and a building of genuine and ongoing interest to international scholarship on the topography and civic institutions of Hospitaller Rhodes. Any conservation, research or interpretive use of the building should present this layered and disputed history transparently, rather than asserting the traditional identification as settled fact.

National

ΥΑ 23084/737/25-8-1948 — ΦΕΚ 10/23-9-1948 (Ministerial Decision declaring the monuments of the Medieval Town of Rhodes, including the Castellania, protected under Greek Archaeological Law), subsequently confirmed under Law 3028/2002.

UNESCO

World Heritage property: Medieval City of Rhodes (ref. 493), inscribed 1988 (decision reference 12COM XIV.A/1988), meeting criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). A contributing component monument of the property, though not individually named in its published Statement of Outstanding Universal Value.

References

de Vaivre, Jean-Bernard. “Sur quelques monuments de Rhodes.” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 153e année, N. 1 (2009): 323–387. Castellania discussion at 375–377.
Gabriel, Albert. La cité de Rhodes, 1310–1522. 2 vols. Paris: E. de Boccard, 1921–1923. Castellania discussed vol. II, 78, 93–102.
Hellenic Government Gazette (ΦΕΚ). Ministerial Decision 23084/737 (25 August 1948), ΦΕΚ 10 (23 September 1948), protection of the monuments of the Medieval Town of Rhodes; Law 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in General.
Heritage Narrative Asset 02: “Castellania, Court of the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes, Greece.” Project documentation.
ICOMOS. ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites. Paris: ICOMOS, 2008.
ICOMOS Australia. The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. Burwood: ICOMOS Australia, 2013.
Inglieri, Renato Umberto. Carta Archeologica dell’isola di Rodi. Firenze, 1936.
Kollias, Elias. “Topographical problems of the medieval market of Rhodes and of the southern wall of the Kollakio ‘versus civitatem.’” Praktika (1992): 97.
Kollias, Elias. “Αναζητώντας τα χαμένα μνημεία της Μεσαιωνικής πόλης της Ρόδου” [Searching for the lost monuments of the Medieval town of Rhodes]. In Η Μεσαιωνική πόλη της Ρόδου, Έργα αποκατάστασης 2000–2008, 283–297. Rhodes, 2008.
Kollias, Elias. Οι Ιππότες της Ρόδου, το Παλάτι και η Πόλη [The Knights of Rhodes, the Palace and the City]. Athens, 2001.
Luttrell, Anthony. “Fourteenth-Century Hospitaller Lawyers.” Traditio 21 (1965): 449–456.
Luttrell, Anthony. The Town of Rhodes (1306–1356). Rhodes, 2003. Cited via Manoussou-Della 2013 (below) in support of the early Collachium topography and the dating of the Order’s first Hospital (1311/1314); not independently consulted for this document.
Manousou, Katerina, and Eleni Papavasileiou. “Μεσαιωνική Πόλη της Ρόδου: Η αρχαιολογική έρευνα ως βάση για τον σύγχρονο αρχιτεκτονικό σχεδιασμό.” In Νέες Πόλεις πάνω σε Παλιές, Proceedings of the Scientific Conference, Rhodes, 27–30 September 1993, 583–602.
Manoussou-Della, Katerina. “Zones and Nodes of Interaction: The Development of the Hospitaller Town of Rhodes.” Chapter 8 in Emanuel Buttigieg and Simon Phillips, eds., Islands and Military Orders, c.1291–c.1798, 87–97. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Note on sources: the article “crai_00650536_2017_num_161_4_96334_Castellania.pdf” supplied for this research is, on inspection, Jean-Bernard de Vaivre’s “Gustave Schlumberger et le décor héraldique de l’auberge de France à Rhodes,” CRAI 161e année, N. 4 (2017): 1527–1560 — an article on the Inn of France, not on the Castellania, despite its filename; it is retained here as a bibliographic note rather than cited as a source on the Castellania itself.
Papachristodoulou, Christodoulos. Ιστορία της Ρόδου [History of Rhodes]. Athens, 1994.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. “Historytelling: Designing Validated Heritage Narratives for Non-captive Audiences. Evidence from EU Funded Projects in the Programming Period 2014–2020.” LUMEN Proceedings 14 (2020): 21–37. https://doi.org/10.18662/lumproc/ibmage2020/02.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. “SEE/B/0016/4.3/X SAGITTARIUS Record Sheet of the Great Hospital of the Knights in Rhodes.” Southeast Europe Transnational Cooperation Programme 2007–2013. Budapest, 2013.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. Statements of Significance: Principles, Methodology, Application for the Intensive Training Course of the Profession of Tourist Guides in the Interpretation of Heritage. Rhodes: Greek Ministry of Tourism / University of the Aegean, 2014. Vol. I, 98 pp.; Vol. II, 82 pp.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. “The United States of Europe. Dress Rehearsal: Rhodes 1306–1522.” In EUROTHENTICA. Apple: Cupertino, 2017. ISBN 9788890859267.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. “Intensive Composite Training in Gamification to Rewind the Tourism Service Design.” Heritage4Growth, 2021-1-RO01-KA220-VET-000033109, Erasmus+ Programme, 2022.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., and Weiss-Ibanez, D. “Grand Master Challenge, the Game.” COS/TOUR/699493/DIVERTIMENTO, COSME Programme 2014–2020. Apple: Cupertino, 2016. ISBN 9788890859267.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D. Heritage4Growth, 2021-1-RO01-KA220-VET-000033109. Chios: Artifactory, Erasmus+ Programme 2021–2027.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., and Cinar, K. “Developing a Prototype for Serious Games at Places of Cultural Significance: Evidence from UNESCO-listed Heritage in Greece and Turkey.” In HERiPRENEURSHIP: Sustainable Tourism, Heritage Management and the Cultural and Creative Industries: Creating New Investment Opportunities at Places of Cultural Significance, 197–208. Bucharest: Editura Mega, 2023. ISBN 978-606-020-654-5.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Stavrinoudis, Th., Glyptou, K., and Skoultsos, S. “QR-RHODES: From the Time Machine to the QR Code. Play Rooms for Non-Captive Audiences in the Age of Mobile Telephony — The Approach of the SEE TCP SAGITTARIUS 2011–2014.” In 5th International Scientific Conference “Tourism Trends and Advances in the 21st Century,” 1–14. 2013.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Weiss-Ibanez, D., and Di Russo, A. “The Gamification of Heritage in the UNESCO-Listed Medieval City of Rhodes.” In Proceedings of the 1st International GAMEFIN Conference, ed. P. Tuomi and A. Pertula, 60–70. Pori: Tampere University of Technology, TUT Game Lab, 2017.
Roger, Jean Marc. “Nouveaux regards sur les monuments des hospitaliers à Rhodes.” Journal des savants (2007). Castellania discussion at pp. 406–407, per Manoussou-Della’s citation; the article’s own full pagination is not given in the source reviewed here. Cited via Manoussou-Della 2013 (above); not independently consulted for this document.
Rottiers, Bernard Eugène August. Description des monuments de Rhodes. Bruxelles, 1830. Pl. XXVI.
SATI II Record Sheet 11: Castellania. Project documentation, citing Ministerial Decision ΥΑ 23084/737/25-8-1948 – ΦΕΚ 10/23-9-1948 and UNESCO decision reference 12COM XIV.A/1988.
Société de l’histoire et du patrimoine de l’Ordre de Malte. “Jacques Aymer, Commandeur des Hospitaliers et Bâtisseur.” Cited in the SATI II record sheet for this monument; not directly consulted for this document.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Medieval City of Rhodes.” World Heritage List, ref. 493. Inscribed 1988. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/493.