Bastion of St George

Identity

Site & dates

Post of Germany meets Post of Auvergne › a gate that became the town's most evolved bastion

Also known as the Bastion of Auvergne, the site began as a Byzantine gate on the town's ancient east–west axis, and was rebuilt, walled up and reinforced across five documented building phases into the largest and most developed artillery work of the Rhodes fortifications.

1421–1437

Grand Master Antonio Fluvià builds a tower over 23 m high on the site of the shifted Byzantine gate of St George the Cappadocian, funded by Pope Martin V.

1496

Grand Master Pierre d’Aubusson walls up the gateway, converting it definitively into a strong artillery bastion — the pivotal transformation of the site's five-phase history.

1520–1522

A final, probably unfinished campaign under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, very probably designed by Basilio dalla Scuola, is interrupted by the Ottoman siege.

1993–2008

The blocked outer gateway is discovered and unblocked; a Hellenic Republic restoration and exhibition-fit-out campaign follows, opening the bastion's interior to the public.

Fabric

What survives

One gate, five building phases › and the largest bastion of the Rhodes fortifications

The bastion is a large, evolved artillery work built over and around an earlier city gate: a massive horseshoe-shaped outer masonry mass fronting the moat, a raised artillery platform reinforced with radial spur walls, and a system of interior gun-casemates and countermine galleries.

The relief of St George and Fluvià's gate

The west façade preserves the large relief of St George and the carved coats of arms of Fluvià and Pope Martin V — the only substantial surviving fabric of the site's original gate-and-tower phase.

Interior casemates and countermine galleries

Three gun-casemates and a system of countermine gallery-passages, built to control the bastion's perimeter at a level below that of the later, deepened moat.

The raised artillery platform (terre-plein)

Reinforced with radial spur walls and connected to the curtain wall of the Auvergne sector in the final building phase; a large vaulted casemate hall still stands on its south side.

The Auvergne-sector latrine

A masonry cesspit some 1.90 × 5.08 m and over 8 m deep, identified by a 2017 study as the most substantial latrine so far documented among the town's fortifications, comparable to one found at Fort St Nicholas.

History

Persons & events

1421–2007 › the Grand Masters who built it, and the study that confirmed its rank

When Grand Master Zacosta divided the town's defences among the Order's langues in 1465, the sector of the Tongue of Germany was defined as running to this tower, making it the boundary marker at the southern limit of the German Post; by 1522 responsibility for the tower itself had passed to the Tongue of Auvergne.

Antonio Fluvià, Grand Master 1421–1437

Built, with funds from Pope Martin V, the more than 23 m-high tower that gives the monument its name.

Pierre d’Aubusson, Grand Master 1476–1503

Walled up the old gateway in 1496 to convert the site into a strong artillery bastion — the pivotal phase in its five-phase transformation.

Philippe Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Grand Master 1521–1522

Commissioned the bastion's final, possibly unfinished adaptation on the eve of the 1522 siege; elected Grand Master over Andreas d’Amaral by a narrow margin in January 1521.

Andreas d’Amaral, Grand Chancellor, Tongue of Portugal

Convicted of treason during the 1522 siege after his servant was caught signalling the Ottoman camp; his severed head was displayed on the bastion facing the Turkish lines.

Basilio dalla Scuola, Italian architect

Very probably designed the bastion's final, war-interrupted building campaign of 1520–1521, commissioned by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

Anna-Maria Kasdagli & Katerina Manousou-Della

Authors of the peer-reviewed 2007 study of the bastion's construction history — previously available to this project only at second hand, now directly consulted — that identifies it as “the early — and unique — bastion of the fortifications of Rhodes.”

Phases

From gate to bastion: five building phases, c. 1382–1521

Phases A–E › a peer-reviewed 2007 study, directly consulted for this document

Anna-Maria Kasdagli and Katerina Manousou-Della's 2007 study sets out the site's development across five identified building phases, running from a late-fourteenth-century suburb wall to the final, war-interrupted campaign of 1520–1521.

A — The suburb wall and Fluvià's tower, c. 1382–1437

A 1382 document records suburb walls already in place; Grand Master Antonio Fluvià builds the tall tower, funded by Pope Martin V, that gives the site its name.

B — The earliest spur bulwark, 1437–1461

Grand Masters Lastic and Milly add a five-sided ‘spur’ bulwark protecting the gateway and tower — the earliest such bulwark in the defences of Rhodes.

C — Gun loops and a raised platform, 1461–1476

Grand Masters Zacosta and Orsini add gun loops, raise an earth gun platform, and relocate the outer gate, reached by a new stone bridge.

D — Rebuilding after 1480, 1476–1520

Grand Masters Aubusson and Carretto deepen the moat, raise a new horseshoe-shaped bulwark on quarried bedrock, and add a massive earth-fill bringing the curtain wall to some 12 m thick.

E — The final, war-interrupted campaign, 1520–1521

Under Grand Master Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, probably to Basilio dalla Scuola's design, the moat is filled with waterproof clay and the platform raised again — work the 2007 study judges “likely” never fully completed before the 1522 siege.

Siege, 1522

The bastion in the siege of 1522

10 August – 1 December 1522 › a lost watch-tower, an executed traitor, and the start of surrender talks

This document's sources disagree on the precise date of d’Amaral's execution (7–8 or 15 November 1522) and on which bulwarks displayed his quartered body; both points are flagged here rather than resolved.

The loss of the watch-tower, 10 August 1522

An Ottoman artillery battery positioned opposite the Tower of St George brought down the campanile of the conventual Church of St John — destroying, per Kenneth Setton's academic account, the defenders' principal observation post over the siege lines.

The treason and execution of Andreas d’Amaral

A servant of the Grand Chancellor, Blas Dias, was caught shooting arrow-borne messages to the Ottoman camp and was hanged; d’Amaral himself was tried, convicted of treason and beheaded. His severed head was displayed on the bastion facing the Turkish lines, and his quartered body hung, per the sources consulted, on the bulwarks of Auvergne, Spain and Italy, together with either England or France depending on the account.

This project's own heritage-narrative source material traces the roots of the affair to a 1510 dispute between d’Amaral and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and credits Rachel, wife of Simeon Granada, commander of the Jewish militia battalion, with exposing the plot.

Siege mining and the ancient sewers

The Ottoman siege engineer Ahmed Pasha is recorded as having exploited the ancient sewage and water-conduit network beneath the medieval city, visible at the point where the bastion meets the natural bedrock, to dig assault mines beneath the walls.

Negotiating surrender, December 1522

On 1 December 1522 the Genoese intermediary Girolamo Moniglia approached the Christian lines below the Auvergne post to open the negotiations that led, after further weeks of talks, to the Knights' capitulation and departure from Rhodes on 1 January 1523.

Gallery

Photo gallery

Six views › the bastion, its moat, and the town it still overlooks

Assessment

Significance criteria

Nine-criteria framework › International importance

Rarity

A peer-reviewed 2007 study, now directly consulted for this document, explicitly characterises the completed structure as "the early — and unique — bastion of the fortifications of Rhodes," a superlative this document did not rely on before independent verification.

Exceptional

Representativeness

The transformation, across five identified building phases, of an earlier medieval city gate into a fully developed artillery bastion exemplifies in a single monument the broader adaptation of the Rhodes fortifications to gunpowder-age siege warfare.

Exceptional

Aesthetic value

The bastion's massive fortified profile, its carved relief of St George and accompanying coats of arms beneath Fluvià's tower, give it strong architectural and landscape interest.

High

Integrity

The core defensive fabric retains high authenticity, reinforced by the 1995–1998 excavations' finding of an excellently preserved counterscarp; but the interior has been substantially adapted for modern exhibition use, and the present parapet is attributed to post-1522 Ottoman rebuilding.

Moderate/High

Historical value

Unusually well-anchored in directly documented events: the loss of the watch-tower, the exposure of d’Amaral's treason plot, the public display of his executed head, and the opening of surrender negotiations immediately outside it.

Exceptional

Symbolic & social value

As both the site named for a venerated warrior saint and the setting for the public display of an executed traitor's head facing the enemy lines, the bastion carries strong and unusually direct symbolic value.

High

Scientific value

Demonstrated through archaeological research from the 1993 discovery of the blocked gateway through the 1995–1998 excavations, which recovered the earlier town layout and a former drawbridge beneath the terre-plein.

High

Interpretive potential

A single monument through which visitors can trace the transformation of a medieval city gate into the most evolved gunpowder-age bastion of the Rhodes fortifications, and encounter some of the best-documented human episodes of the 1522 siege.

Exceptional

Statement of significance

“The early — and unique — bastion of the fortifications of Rhodes.” (Kasdagli & Manousou-Della, 2007 peer-reviewed study of the bastion.)

The Bastion of St George is the boundary marker at the southern limit of the German Battlepost. It has a significance of international importance as the most evolved of Rhodes' gunpowder-age bastions, transformed from a fifteenth-century city gate into a major work of Hospitaller military engineering, and as the documented setting for some of the most dramatic episodes of the Order's final siege and defeat at Rhodes in 1522: the loss of the conventual church's watch-tower, the treason and execution of the Grand Chancellor Andreas d’Amaral, and the opening of the negotiations that ended two centuries of Hospitaller rule on the island. Together with the Moat of the Medieval Town of Rhodes, the Palace of the Grand Master and the wider circuit of the city walls, it is one of the component monuments of the fortified circuit cited in the Outstanding Universal Value of the UNESCO-inscribed Medieval City of Rhodes.

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 Bastion of St George, 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). One of the component monuments of the fortified circuit cited in the property's Statement of Outstanding Universal Value.