The Gate of St Paul

Identity

The Remake

Mole of St Nicholas, harbour entrance › between the commercial harbour and the war harbour of Mandráki

Location & setting

Seafront fortifications on the mole of St Nicholas at the harbour entrance, between the commercial (Kolóna/Mandráki) harbour and the war harbour, adjoining the Hospitaller Arsenal de Milly and standing immediately beside the surviving footings of the Tower of Naillac.

Type & dimensions

A Hospitaller fortification tower and gate-bastion, cylindrical in plan, approximately 12 metres in diameter and 16 metres high, joined to the main curtain wall by a short connecting “neck” and fronted by a polygonal outer bastion (boulevard) carrying twelve low, splayed cannon embrasures.

Construction history

Successor to an earlier, probably Byzantine-derived tower (the “Trébuc tower”); rebuilt within the harbour-front campaign of Grand Masters Zacosta, Orsini and, on the best-sourced evidence, Pierre d’Aubusson, with completion dateable by heraldry to 1476–1484.

Heritage designation

Component monument of the “Medieval City of Rhodes” UNESCO World Heritage property (inscribed 1988, criteria ii, iv, v); protected under Greek Archaeological Law (ΥΑ 23084/737/1948; Law 3028/2002).

Present use

Archaeological monument administered by the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Dodecanese; standing fabric within the conserved seafront fortification circuit of the Medieval Town.

Architecture

The Name on the Round Tower

12 metres in diameter, 16 metres high › twelve cannon embrasures and a shared drawbridge type

The cylindrical tower and its neck

Set roughly 3 metres back from the main curtain wall and joined to it by a short connecting “neck” — an arrangement this project’s sources describe as new to Rhodes’s fortifications at the time of its construction. A gun platform at the summit communicates with the wall-walk by straight flights of steps.

The polygonal bastion

An outer bastion or boulevard, reached from the quay, carries twelve low, splayed cannon embrasures trained on the waters of Mandráki, Kolóna and the channel toward the St Nicholas mole.

The marble relief of St Paul

On the tower’s inner face, a carved stone frame holds a relief in grey-blue marble of St Paul, much eroded, wearing an episcopal mitre above a Gothic inscription reading “S PAUL’.” Beneath it, three shields: at centre those of Pope Sixtus IV, crowned with tiara and keys; flanking it, those of the Order of St John and of Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson.

The drawbridge

Vertical slots surviving in the bastion’s outer wall are identified in this project’s sources as the housings for the counterweighted beams of a drawbridge — a mechanism shared, among the standing gates of Rhodes, with only one other: the Gate of d’Amboise.

The interior chamber

The tower’s masonry breaks the curtain wall to form a two-storey vaulted trapezoidal chamber, open toward the tarsana (shipyard) area within the town — an evolved form of the “ouvert à la gorge” type, with lateral cannon embrasures at the upper level covering the gate and outwork with flanking fire.

History

8 Labour Years

1444–1484 › from the Mamluk siege to a papal and Grand-Masterial coat of arms

The Trébuc tower

The structure the present tower replaced — “probably” of Byzantine origin, forming the north-eastern angle of the old kastro and numbered among the “three towers of St Nicholas” named in early archival sources; its possible identity with the “Porte Saint-Nicolas” mentioned at the 1444 siege is called “indeterminable” in the scholarship.

The Windmills–Naillac–St Nicholas campaign

The tower of St Nicholas, at the mole’s seaward tip, was completed under Grand Master Raymond de Zacosta (1461–1467); the tower of the Windmills under Jean de Lastic (1437–1454); the harbour-entrance Tower of Naillac was reinforced under Giovanni Battista Orsini (1467–1476), who in 1472 appointed Pierre d’Aubusson superintendent of all the Order’s fortification works.

D’Aubusson’s reconstruction

This project’s principal architectural-historical source credits Grand Master d’Aubusson with replacing the Trébuc tower with the present cylindrical tower — work set against his documented rebuilding, from December 1476, of the flood-damaged harbour wall and his redevelopment, by late 1478, of the whole Tarsana Wall and the new Sea Gate.

Fortifying the passage, 1475

In April 1475, with an Ottoman assault already anticipated, the Order’s Council resolved to close the harbour mouth with a chain of tree-trunks and to wall up the Tarsana Gate; a December 1475 document specifies the intention to make it explicitly “a defensive gate” (“che se faza porta defensiva a lo dito tarsinale”).

Walled up again, 1481

Following the earthquake of 1481, which badly damaged the vaults of the neighbouring Tarsana arsenal, both the Gate of St Nicholas and the Tarsana Gate were walled up a second time for defensive reasons, as part of the Order’s wider post-earthquake reorganisation of the town’s defences.

Testimony

Master Builders

1921–2013 › Gabriel, Manoussou-Della/Ntella, and a doctoral reassessment

“Che se faza porta defensiva…”

The Order’s own Council records supply the clearest evidence that this gate was treated as an active military asset rather than a decorated waypoint: in April 1475 the Council resolved to close the harbour mouth with a chain of tree-trunks and to wall up the Tarsana Gate, and a document of December 1475 specifies the intention “che se faza porta defensiva a lo dito tarsinale” — that it be made a defensive gate.

Order of St John Council records, April and December 1475, as reported in this project’s principal doctoral source for the Mandráki fortifications.

An unresolved question: Zacosta or d’Aubusson?

Not every source consulted for this project agrees on the tower’s builder. Earlier project research, drawing on Albert Gabriel’s 1921 survey, compared the tower’s core masonry to the closely related Tour Saint-Pierre and dated it, on that basis, to the magistracy of Grand Master Zacosta (1461–1467) — with d’Aubusson’s own contribution limited to a later rededication and the addition of the marble relief. The more directly sourced modern architectural-historical account instead credits d’Aubusson with replacing the tower outright. This document reports both readings rather than resolving the question.

Albert Gabriel, 1921, compared against this project’s principal modern architectural-historical source.

“The gate of the bastion of France, or of the Apostle Paul”

This project’s principal doctoral source for the Mandráki fortifications, based on independent archival research, treats the association between this stretch of wall and the Langue of France as settled rather than hypothetical — referring to the gate throughout as “the gate of the bastion of France, or of the Apostle Paul,” and confirming it was known in the sixteenth century as the “Tarsana Gate.”

Katerina Manoussou-Ntella (Della), PhD dissertation, National Technical University of Athens, 2013.

“A tower-like form similar to… the later Gate of St Catherine”

Archaeological investigation during the 2000–2008 restoration campaign revealed an earlier, narrower gate and defensive line beneath the present bastion, attributed to Grand Master Antoni Fluvian (1421–1437). The excavation report describes this earlier gate as having “originally had a tower-like form similar to that of the old gate of the mole, the later Gate of St Catherine,” and explicitly leaves open whether it should be identified with the “Gate of St Nicholas” referred to elsewhere in the literature.

Manousou-Della & Dellas (eds.), Medieval Town of Rhodes: Restoration Works 2000–2008.

Conservation

The final Assault

3rd Community Support Framework campaign › 4th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities

Clearance

Removal of later-added structures — timber shelters, fittings, plant beds — from the area behind the tower and around the neighbouring Arsenal de Milly.

Excavation

Archaeological excavation between the tower and the Arsenal’s east façade, and later to its south, directed by archaeologist Aggeliki Kosma — revealing the earlier gate and defensive line beneath the bastion described in Testimony, above.

Lighting and fencing

Improvement of the electrical and lighting installation around the bastion of St Paul, as part of a broader upgrade of the fortification entrance from Mandráki and the Bastion of St Peter; new metal lattice fencing and a temporary information panel for visitor orientation.

At the Tower of Naillac

Cleaning and repair of dilapidated parts, insulation of the standing masonry, new surface layering and a new electricity network for night-time lighting — described in this project’s sources as preliminary rescue measures pending a planned, more definitive intervention not yet carried out.

The 1997 planning study

Katerina Manoussou-Della’s 1997 conference paper for the Ephorate proposed the St Nicholas mole walk, the tower and gate of St Paul, the Neorion square and the Naillac remains as a single walkable unit linking the harbour-mole circuit to the elevated wall-walk of the sea defences.

Gallery

Photo gallery

Twelve views › the tower, the relief, the bastion and the surrounding harbour-mole circuit

Assessment

Significance criteria

Nine-criteria framework › National to International importance

Rarity

A rare survival among Rhodes’s harbour fortifications: a Hospitaller gun-tower whose construction phases are tied, through its own heraldry, to a precise decade (1476–1484), paired with the Bastion of St Peter as one of the two most technically advanced gun-emplacement designs of its generation, and distinguished by a documented pre-siege defensive conversion rarely available for individual gates of the circuit.

High

Representativeness

Highly representative of the mid-to-late fifteenth-century transition in Hospitaller military architecture from medieval tower-and-curtain defence toward works engineered against gunpowder artillery, and of the Order’s practice of concentrating its most advanced engineering at the vulnerable, high-value harbour entrance.

High

Aesthetic value

The tower’s cylindrical mass, its polygonal bastion and the carved marble relief of St Paul beneath the arms of a Pope, the Order and a Grand Master together represent a considered combination of military engineering and devotional/dynastic display, qualified by the relief’s advanced state of erosion.

Moderate–High

Integrity

The tower’s principal medieval fabric — its cylindrical body, polygonal bastion and marble relief — appears to survive, but with real qualifications: heavy Second World War damage and substantial rebuilding in the early 1950s; the adjoining Tower of Naillac reduced to footings; an unresolved question over whether the core fabric is Zacosta-era work or d’Aubusson’s new construction; and no dedicated modern structural conservation project specific to the tower itself.

Moderate

Historical value

Outstanding historical value as physical and heraldic evidence of the Order’s harbour-front building campaign of the 1460s–1480s, connecting the magistracies of Zacosta, Orsini and d’Aubusson, reinforced by directly dated archival evidence — the Order’s own April and December 1475 Council decisions to fortify this exact gate against an anticipated siege.

Exceptional

Symbolic, spiritual & social value

As the bearer of a dedication combining an apostle, a reigning Pope, the Order and its Grand Master in a single composition, the tower carries strong symbolic value as a public statement of the Order’s spiritual and temporal authority, and lasting social and logistical importance as the controlled passage between the commercial and war harbours.

High

Scientific value

Retains research potential for resolving the still-open question of whether its core fabric predates or postdates d’Aubusson’s magistracy, and for clarifying its relationship to the “Gate of St Nicholas” referred to elsewhere in the literature; the 2000–2008 excavation beneath the bastion demonstrates the site’s continuing capacity to yield new evidence.

High

Interpretive potential

Strong interpretive potential as part of the proposed public walk linking the St Nicholas mole, the Neorion square and the Naillac Tower remains to the elevated sea-wall wall-walk, and as a single monument through which visitors can trace the Order’s transition to artillery-era fortification and an unresolved scholarly question this document presents rather than simplifies.

Moderate–High

Importance level

National to International significance, resting on status as a precisely dateable, technically advanced component of the harbour defences underpinning the Outstanding Universal Value of the UNESCO-inscribed Medieval City of Rhodes, and on documented association with three successive Grand Masters and a reigning Pope.

National–International

Statement of significance

“S PAUL’” (The Gothic inscription beneath the marble relief on the tower’s inner face — the dedication that gave the tower, and later the gate, its name.)

The Gate of St Paul stands on the seafront fortifications of the UNESCO-listed Medieval City of Rhodes, on the mole of St Nicholas at the harbour entrance, immediately beside the footings of the Tower of Naillac and opening onto the Neorion square, the site of the Hospitallers’ medieval arsenal. It is of high heritage significance as a technically advanced, precisely dateable component of the Order’s harbour defences, and as the bearer of a rare surviving composition of papal, Order and Grand-Masterial heraldry beneath a relief of its dedicatory saint. That significance is inseparable from the gate’s strategic function within the Order’s harbour system: in April 1475, anticipating an Ottoman assault, the Grand Master’s Council ordered the harbour mouth closed with a chain and this gate itself walled up as a “defensive gate,” and, after the earthquake of 1481, the gate was walled up for defensive reasons a second time — both episodes falling either side of the standing tower’s own construction (1476–1484). Standing at the junction of the two harbours, the Gate of St Paul controlled entrance and exit between the commercial harbour, Mandráki and the mole of St Nicholas in both directions — an active checkpoint governing maritime traffic rather than simply a decorated waypoint on the fortification circuit. Taken together, these qualities give the Gate of St Paul significance of National to International importance, illuminating both the technical development of Rhodes’s harbour defences and the successive patronage of the Order’s fifteenth-century Grand Masters. An unresolved question of attribution between the Zacosta and d’Aubusson magistracies, and the comparative thinness of its dedicated modern conservation record, are carried forward here as priorities for future research and conservation planning.

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 Gate of St Paul, protected under Greek Archaeological Law), subsequently confirmed under Law 3028/2002.

UNESCO

World Heritage property: Medieval City of Rhodes (ref. 493), inscribed 1988, meeting criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). A contributing component monument of the property, together with Fort St Nicholas, the Palace of the Grand Master, the Great Hospital and the wider fortification circuit.

References

Gabriel, Albert. La Cité de Rhodes, MCCCX–MDXXII: Topographie, architecture militaire. Paris: Geuthner, 1921, pp. 24–25, 70–76. Cited, via this project’s earlier research notes, for the identification of the Trébuc tower, the 1465 Hospitaller statute assigning this stretch of wall to the Langue of France, and the 1484 “Boulevard de France” designation; this material has not been independently re-verified against Gabriel’s original text for this document.
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.
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.
Manousou-Della, Katerina, and George Dellas (eds.). Medieval Town of Rhodes: Restoration Works 2000–2008. Rhodes: Ministry of Culture, Management Fund of Credits for Archaeological Projects Execution, 2008. Cited for the 2000–2008 works around the tower of St Paul, the Arsenal de Milly and the Tower of Naillac; the Zacosta coat of arms on the Bastion of St Peter; and the excavated earlier gate beneath the bastion attributed to Grand Master Fluvian.
Manousou-Ntella, Katerina. “Medieval Gates in Rhodes Town: A Morphological Analysis” [Greek]. In Γλυπτική και Λιθοξο῁κή στη Λατινική Ανατολή, 13ος–17ος αιώνας, edited by Olga Gratziou, 218–242. Rethymno: Institute for Mediterranean Studies / Herakleio: Crete University Press. Cited for the typological classification of the Gate of St Paul as the most characteristic surviving example of the mid- to late-fifteenth-century Rhodian gate type built to take a counterweighted drawbridge.
Manoussou-Della, Katerina. “Towards a Project for the Comprehensive Restoration of the Monumental Complex of the Medieval Fortifications in the City of Rhodes.” In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on the Conservation of Monuments in the Mediterranean, Rhodes, 6–11 May 1997, vol. 4, 575–601. Athens: Technical Chamber of Greece, 1997. Cited for the location and setting of the “bulwark of St Paul the Apostle,” its relationship to the Neorion square and the Tower of Naillac, and the proposed harbour-mole walk.
Manoussou-Della, Katerina. Study notes on the Tower of St Paul (Πύργος του Αποστόλου Παύλου), excerpted in this project’s research notes; architectural description, dimensions and dating of the tower and its marble relief.
Manoussou-Della, Katerina. Η πόλη της Ρόδου κατά τους μεσαιωνικούς χρόνους: Ο μετασχηματισμός των οχυρώσεων από την ύστερη αρχαιότητα έως την ιπποτική οχυρωμένη πόλη (7ος αι.–1480) [The City of Rhodes in the Medieval Period: The Transformation of the Fortifications from Late Antiquity to the Hospitaller Fortified City, 7th c.–1480]. PhD dissertation, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens, October 2013. Cited for the dedicated analysis of the Mandráki war-harbour fortifications; the identification of the gate as “the gate of the bastion of France, or of the Apostle Paul”; the April and December 1475 Council decisions to close the harbour mouth with a chain and to wall up the Tarsana Gate as a “defensive gate”; the 1473–1478 building campaign along the Tarsana wall and the St Peter–Pagnac curtain; the Naillac Tower’s separate harbour-chain mechanism; the 1501 abolition of the early gate between the Heredia towers; and the 1481 post-earthquake walling of the Tarsana and St Nicholas gates.
Manousou-Ntella, Katerina. “The Development of the Early Fortifications of the Hospitaller Town of Rhodes (1309–1480).” In The Struggle for Supremacy: The Mediterranean World in 1453 and Beyond, edited by George Cassar, Dane Munro and Noel Buttigieg. 2018. Cited for the replacement of the Trébuc tower by Grand Master d’Aubusson, d’Aubusson’s 1472 appointment as superintendent of fortification works, the joint Naillac-Orsini heraldry on the neighbouring tower, and the pairing of the bastions of St Paul and St Peter as especially advanced gun-emplacement designs.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., and Cinar, K. 2023. “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. ISBN 978 606 020 654 5.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., and Cinar, K. (eds). 2021. Touriboost. Tourism experiences through hidden cultural heritage stories. NEU University, Konya.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Di Russo, A., Cinar, K. 2020. “Culture as an Instrument of Mass Construction.” In Kavoura, A., Kefallonitis, E., Theodoridis, P. (eds), Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham, 759–764.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Di Russo, A., Cinar, K. 2020. “Exploiting Human Cognitive Architecture to Design a New Cultural Narrative for Non-captive Audiences: The TOURiBOOST Project.” In Kavoura, A., Kefallonitis, E., Theodoridis, P. (eds), Strategic Innovative Marketing and Tourism. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham, 483–490.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Stavrinoudis, Th., Glyptou, K., and Skoultsos, S. 2013. “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.
Papathanasiou-Zuhrt, D., Weiss-Ibanez, D., and Di Russo, A. (2021). “The Gamification of Heritage in the UNESCO-Listed Medieval City of Rhodes.” 1st International GAMEFIN Conference, edited by Tuomi, P., and Pertula, A. Tampere University of Technology, TUT Game Lab, Finland, Pori, 60–70.
REBOOT Statement of Significance: Fort St Nicholas, Rhodes (2026) — cited for a general reference coordinate for the UNESCO-listed fortification circuit.
REBOOT Statement of Significance: Gate Émery d’Amboise, Rhodes (2026) — cited for the comparative note on the drawbridge mechanism shared between the two gates.
UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Medieval City of Rhodes.” World Heritage List, ref. 493. Inscribed 1988.