Hospice of St Catherine

Identity

Site & dates

Centre for Educational Archaeological Programmes › via circa le mare, near the Gate of St Catherine

The Hospice of St Catherine stands on the via circa le mare, the coastal commercial road linking the Hospitaller high street to the Mole of the Windmills, roughly 100 metres south-west of the gate that took its name, from 1465, as the Gate of St Catherine. Founded in 1391–92 by the Italian admiral Domenico d’Allemagna as a guest hospice with an attached chapel, it combined religious devotion, elite and general hospitality, and ground-floor commerce in a single building — one of the most extensively documented Hospitaller charitable foundations on Rhodes.

1391–92

Foundation by Domenico d’Allemagna, admiral of the Order, under Grand Master Juan Fernández de Heredia; confirmed July 1391; endowed with mills, houses, storerooms and relics brought from Constantinople.

1480–81

Destroyed, or very substantially damaged, in the Ottoman siege of 1480 and the earthquake that struck Rhodes the following year.

1516

Rebuilt by the Italian admiral Costanzo Operti under Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto, in fine ashlar masonry grouped stylistically with the Auberge de France and the Castellania.

1986–2015

Restored across three campaigns into the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese’s Centre for Educational Archaeological Programmes; the west-wing restoration won a Europa Nostra diploma in 1997.

Hospitality

A hospice for the Order’s guests

1391–1522 › from eminent guests to pilgrims of every rank

Reserved, in its founder’s own conception, chiefly for eminent guests of the Order, the Hospice was already in documented use by 1394–95, when the Italian notary Niccolo de Martoni described “a certain beautiful hospice in which there are many beautiful rooms, with many good beds.” Within a generation its clientele had visibly broadened: Pero Tafur (1436–37) called it “a hospital other than the Conventual one that was reserved for the pilgrims,” and Roberto da Sanseverino (1458–59) reported that it was where “all the pilgrims commonly lodged,” though his own party ultimately stayed instead at the house of the Order’s Admiral.

Named eyewitness guests, 1394–1522

Niccolo de Martoni, Ruy González de Clavijo, the party of Nicolò III d’Este, Nompar de Caumont, Pero Tafur, Roberto da Sanseverino, Alessandro di Filippo Rinuccini and Barthélemy de Salignac — a documentary run of named guests spanning more than a century.

Distinct from the Order’s hospitals

A guesthouse-and-chapel of the Order’s charitable, “Hospitaller” tradition in its literal sense — administratively separate from the Order’s dedicated medical institution, the Great Hospital of the Knights.

A blue canopied four-poster bed beneath a painted-beam ceiling, in one of the hospice's upper-floor guest chambers — One of the upper-storey guest chambers today — evoking the “many beautiful rooms, with many good beds” described by the pilgrim Niccolo de Martoni, 1394–95.

Fabric

What survives

Two building phases › 1391–92 and 1516

The standing building is two-storeyed, of uniform late-Hospitaller conception: a central ground-floor entrance opens into a vaulted, semi-outdoor space giving access to four auxiliary vaulted rooms, and, by an open-air staircase, to the upper-storey porch. Fine ashlar masonry of the 1516 rebuilding — independently grouped by the architectural historian Elias Kollias with the Auberge de France and the Castellania — predominates, but cruder masonry of smaller courses and simpler openings, embedded in the north and east ground-floor walls, survives from the original 1391–92 structure.

Ground floor: shops and vaults

Five independent shops occupied the north facade, typical of Hospitaller high-street commercial architecture; one gave access to two further vaulted rooms on the building’s east side.

Upper floor: porch and reception hall

Three doors opened from the porch onto an east wing of three large rooms, a small guardroom, and the great reception hall (5.5 × 10.5 m) with its own large fireplace, flanked by two further bedrooms and a kitchen.

The rebuilt east wing, 2011–2015

Destroyed by Second World War bombing and reconstructed in the final restoration campaign, deliberately differentiated in materials except for its north facade, rebuilt as an accurate reproduction from a 1914 archival photograph.

Painted ceilings and pebble mosaics

Surviving timber ceilings carry painted geometric and floral decoration; two superimposed pebble-mosaic (hochlakia) pavements, removed and relaid during restoration, are considered among the most representative examples of Dodecanesian pebble-mosaic design.

History

Persons & events

1391–2015 › founder, guests, rebuilders, restorers

The Hospice’s biography runs from a Neapolitan admiral’s personal foundation, through a documented sequence of named pilgrim guests, destruction and rebuilding, an almost undocumented Ottoman period, and three modern restoration campaigns that also rehoused sixteen resident low-income households.

Domenico d’Allemagna, admiral, d. 1411

Neapolitan knight and admiral of the Order; founded the Hospice and its chapel, 1391–92, endowing it with mills, houses and Constantinopolitan relics; died before a planned transfer to Franciscan jurisdiction could be completed.

Juan Fernández de Heredia, Grand Master 1377–1396

Confirmed the Hospice’s foundation charter, July 1391.

Costanzo Operti, admiral

Rebuilt the Hospice in 1516 under Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto, after its destruction in the 1480 siege and 1481 earthquake.

The Ottoman period and the Jewish Quarter, 1523–1944

Almost entirely undocumented for two and a half centuries; the surrounding district became the centre of Rhodes’s Jewish quarter, the building itself serving at least in part as a Jewish girls’ school and family housing, until the 1944 deportation.

Katerina Manousou-Della, architect

Lead architect across all three restoration campaigns, 1986–2015; the west-wing restoration won a Europa Nostra diploma in 1997.

A contested identity

Recent research (Manousou-Della & Dellas, 2018–19; Zoitou, 2021) argues the true 1391 foundation may instead lie at a separate, still-ruined compound some 100 metres to the north-east — a genuinely open question this Statement reports rather than resolves.

Testimony

Eye witness: guests, relics, a disputed site

1394–2001 › three moments recorded by pilgrims and excavators

A beautiful hospice, 1394–95

The Italian notary and pilgrim Niccolo de Martoni described the Hospice as “a certain beautiful hospice in which there are many beautiful rooms, with many good beds” — adding that it was a house “in which lodge all pilgrims going and coming from Jerusalem and other holy places overseas, however noble they may be,” evidence the foundation was, from close to its start, open more broadly than a strictly noble-only institution.

Niccolo de Martoni, Italian notary and pilgrim, 1394–95; ed. Le Grand, Revue de l’Orient latin III (1895).

Relics from Constantinople

De Martoni’s inventory, the principal surviving record of the chapel’s relic collection, lists fragments of the Holy Sponge, of Christ’s Purple Robe and of the Virgin’s dresses and veil, a piece of the True Cross, and a bone of the finger of St John the Baptist, obtained, in de Martoni’s words, from the Byzantine emperor himself, “his dear and steadfast friend.”

Niccolo de Martoni’s relic inventory, 1394–95, as analysed by Zoitou (2021).

A coat of arms, a tombstone, a disputed site, 1987–2001

Excavations at a separate, still substantially ruined compound some 100 metres to the north-east recovered a glazed ceramic tile bearing Domenico d’Allemagna’s own coat of arms and a tombstone fragment dated 1420–22 — physical evidence reopening the question of which building is truly the site of the 1391 foundation.

Michailidou, excavation report, 1987; Kasdagli, 2016; Manousou-Della & Dellas, 2018.

Story

Room with a view

Hospice of St Catherine, 1391 › a narrative reconstruction for visitors

A dramatised first-person account, written for visitor interpretation and drawing on real pilgrim testimony and the Hospice’s documented history (see Testimony and History, above). It is a narrative device, not a literal historical record.

The Invitation

We arrived in Rhodes on the 15th of June 1461. In the port sail merchant ships from Italy, Spain, Aragon, Sicily, Syria, Egypt and vessels of the Grand Turk. I count 16 windmills grinding day and night! We set for our hospice, Santa Caterina, three steps away from the port. Master Roberto is joining there noble pilgrims returning from Holy Jerusalem. We receive an invitation from the illustrious Grand Master. We meet at the Mass in the Church of Beata Maria Misericordia di Burgo, close to the hospice. From there we go to the Inn of the Italian Brothers, where we shall eat and drink.

The Will of Domenico Allemagna

I settle in the ground floor, to keep close to the store rooms and the well and buy provision in the five shops that Santa Caterina has. A large staircase leads to the upper floor, where the Master resides. Heavenly scents arise from the big kitchen that is up there. The Master’s room has a painted ceiling, a large fireplace and a luxurious bed. His window shows to the lovely garden. All around Santa Caterina are beautiful gardens and rich houses. The shopkeepers tell me that Admiral Allemagna built Santa Caterina in 1391. The Admiral, bless his soul, was very rich. He left windmills and other properties for the upkeep Santa Caterina.

The Whisper

I cross the street towards the Magna Platea to buy Rhodian sugar and soap, the best in the world. I carry 30 ducats with me and a knife as I know how some look pious and virtuous but are not. The merchant is Greek and asks 13 ducats for a quintal. I deposit the sum and take the receipt. I ask how things stand with the Grand Turk. The merchant whispers that the illustrious Grand Master called Jean de Bourbon, who fought the English with King Charles VII. Bertrand de Clouet, Grand Prior of France, is here. Grand Commander d’Aubusson is rebuilding the walls. Rhodes is rich. The Grand Turk is informed. God bless the souls of those who shall fight to protect us…

Gallery

Photo gallery

Twelve views › the hospice, its guest rooms, and its life today

Assessment

Significance criteria

Nine-criteria framework › National to International importance

Rarity

A rare surviving example of a Hospitaller guest hospice combining religious devotion, elite and general hospitality, and commerce within a single structure — distinct from, and less common than, the Order’s dedicated hospitals.

High

Representativeness

Representative of the “second Hospitaller building period” (1481–1522) in its 1516 fabric, of early Hospitaller charitable-hospitality architecture in its 1391–92 traces, and of the district’s later transformation into Rhodes’s Ottoman-period Jewish quarter.

High

Aesthetic value

Genuine fine ashlar masonry and early Renaissance detailing, with surviving painted timber ceilings and pebble-mosaic pavements; qualified by the loss, before restoration, of the reception hall’s most elaborate painted ceiling.

Moderate to High

Integrity

Qualified by the near-total wartime loss and 2011–2015 reconstruction of the east wing, and by the genuinely open scholarly debate over the building’s own identity; the west wing and ground floor represent its most securely restored fabric.

Moderate

Historical value

A rare, richly documented Hospitaller charitable foundation, its 1391–92 origins attested by a surviving foundation charter and corroborated by an unusually dense sequence of named eyewitness guests spanning over a century.

Exceptional

Symbolic, spiritual & social value

A chapel housing one of only two Christological relic collections in Hospitaller Rhodes; a later social dimension as part of Rhodes’s Jewish quarter, and a restoration that combined monument conservation with the resettlement of sixteen low-income households.

High

Scientific value

Substantial ongoing research potential, both archaeological (its surrounding Hellenistic, Byzantine and synagogue remains) and historical (the unresolved question of the true site of the 1391 foundation); its 1991 structural study served as an explicit pilot project for other Hospitaller monuments.

Moderate to High

Interpretive potential

Its current use as the Ephorate’s Centre for Educational Archaeological Programmes, integrated since 2000 into a unified, walkable archaeological landscape, gives it outstanding, already-realised interpretive potential.

High

Importance level

A rare, richly documented Hospitaller guest hospice, Europa Nostra-recognised for its restoration, and a genuine, actively debated subject of ongoing archaeological research, contributing to the Outstanding Universal Value of the UNESCO-inscribed Medieval City of Rhodes.

National to International

Statement of significance

“Hospitale Sanctae Catherinae.” (“The Hospice of St Catherine.”)

The Hospice of St Catherine stands in the Upper Jewish Quarter at the eastern end of the Borgo of the UNESCO-listed Medieval City of Rhodes, on the coastal high-street axis leading from the town centre to the Mole of the Windmills. Its social function, laid down in its 1391 foundation charter, was hospitality rather than medical care: conceived chiefly for eminent guests of the Order, and only gradually, by the early 15th century, broadened to pilgrims of every social status, per a run of named eyewitnesses. It carried real devotional weight within the Order’s system, its chapel housing a major relic collection that made it, alongside the Order’s own conventual church of St John, one of only two churches in Hospitaller Rhodes known to have held Christological relics. Taken together, the Hospice of St Catherine merits an Importance Level of National to International significance: a rare and exceptionally well-documented Hospitaller guest hospice, its foundation, relic collection, guests, destruction, rebuilding and restoration attested across more than six centuries of continuous documentary and archaeological record; a Europa Nostra-recognised exemplar of sensitive, socially engaged restoration; and a genuine, actively debated subject of ongoing archaeological and historical research, honestly reported as such in this Statement.

National

Protected under Greek Archaeological Law by Ministerial Decision ΥΑ 23084/737 (25 August 1948), ΦΕΚ 10 (23 September 1948), confirmed under Law 3028/2002 on the Protection of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage in General.

UNESCO

Medieval City of Rhodes (ref. 493), inscribed 1988, criteria (ii) and (iv). Not itself one of the property’s three individually named principal monuments, but a genuine contributing structure within the Borgo ensemble, and one of the most extensively excavated and presented sites within it.

Europa Nostra

Diploma, 1997, awarded with the Dodecanese Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities for the restoration of the Hospice’s west wing, in recognition of “the careful and sensitive restoration of the medieval hospice… and the educational initiative that began with the rescue of the finds.”

References

Anapolitanos, Th., Kasdagli, A.M., and Manoussou-Della, K. “The Restoration of the Knights’ Hospice of St Catherine in the Medieval City of Rhodes.” Proceedings, 4th International Symposium on the Conservation of Monuments in the Mediterranean Basin, Rhodes 6–11 May 1997, vol. 4, 483–508. Athens: Technical Chamber of Greece.
Belabre, F. de. Rhodes of the Knights. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908.
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Della [Manousou-Ntella], K., and Dellas, G. “The Eastern District of the Borgo of Rhodes Town: Urban and Architectural Transformations.” 2019.
Della, K. [Manousou-Della/Ntella], and Dellas, G., eds. Medieval Town of Rhodes: Restoration Works 2000–2008. Rhodes: Ministry of Culture / Management Fund of Credits for Archaeological Projects Execution, 2008. Hospice of St Catherine section, 80–84.
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Kasdagli, Anna-Maria. Stone Carving of the Hospitaller Period in Rhodes: Displaced Pieces and Fragments. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2016. Source for the redating, to after 1470, of the Allemagna-family coat of arms on the standing building’s north face.
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Kollias, Elias. The Knights of Rhodes: The Palace and the City. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 2007. Pp. 290–295 for the Our Lady of Victory / St Pantaleon / St Catherine identification debate.
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Manousou-Ntella, K., and Kotlida, D. “The Hospitaller Hospice of St Catherine.” In Medieval Town of Rhodes: Restoration Works 2011–2016, 117–125. Rhodes: Ministry of Culture and Sports, 2017.
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Michailidou, M. Excavation report. Αρχαιολογικόν Δελτίον (ΑΔ) 42, Χρονικά (1987): 670–672. Records the ceramic tile bearing Domenico d’Allemagna’s coat of arms, excavated at the north-eastern compound.
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