The Port of Acandia

The ancient account of the siege of Demetrius Poliorcetes is Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca Historica, Book XX). It describes the diateichisma, a cross-wall with derelict towers standing between the two ancient harbours, which the Choma fortification of the east mole replaced after the siege.

The church of Agios Ioannis tis Pigis, attested from at least the 12th century, is depicted in Buondelmonti’s early-15th-century drawings of Rhodes. Its name and position most probably gave the medieval “Gate of Agios Ioannis” its name and orientation.

Richard I’s fleet anchored at Rhodes for ten days in 1191, during the Third Crusade, long before the Knights came. No source used here connects the stay to any further action by Richard on the island; it is recorded as evidence of the Crusader-period use of the anchorage.

A document of 14 March 1452, in the mastership of Jean de Lastic, records the Order’s decision to fortify the Jewish quarter using the community’s own financial contribution, funding the start of the “Tower of the Mills” and the “bastion of the harbour”.

A land-grant document of Lastic dated 24 November 1452 refers to “where formerly there was the gate and tower of Acandia”, which confirms that the gate had already been moved.

The relocated Gate of Acandia is dated by the surviving building inscription of the master mason Manuel Kounte, 20 August 1457, in the era of Grand Master Jacques de Milly. It belongs to a standardised group of town gates of the same campaign, each carrying a relief of its patron saint over an ogival opening designed for a drawbridge.

Raimondo Zacosta’s decree of 1465 divided responsibility for this stretch of wall between the tongues of Italy and Provence. Hospitaller archive documents of 1440 and 1475 mention an early “proteichisma” or “barbacana” outwork, and the gate appears under two further names: the “gate Arnaldi” (1391) and the “gate of Castellania” (1475).

The 2001 exploration of the church complex of St Mary of the Victory and Agios Panteleimon recovered a Gothic-vaulted side chapel and two dated tombs, those of Johanna de Perrier (from Brittany, died 1493) and Martinus de Rossca (from the Basque country, died 1505).

At the north-east corner of the same fortification, a surviving heraldic frame dated 1516 supports the rebuilding of the mansion now identified as the Hospice of St Catherine under Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto and Admiral Constanzo Operti.

The boundaries of the “major” and “minor” Jewish quarters around 1400 are uncertain in the published medieval documents. The same “1516” date appears both for the Hospice and, in one source, as the completion of the Bastion del Carretto; this may reflect building across the whole sector under Fabrizio del Carretto, or a conflation of the two building histories.

The source Statement says that Naillac’s harbour-mouth tower “still bears his name”. On the account adopted in this series (the Mandraki and Commercial Harbour Statements) the Tower of Naillac was demolished by 1863, so that wording is not repeated here.

My name is David, and I am thirteen years old. I live in the lower Jewish quarter of Rhodes, just inside the Gate of Acandia, and every morning I carry water to ships. The town of Rhodes has a great harbour, the one with the tall tower and the customs house, where the big merchant ships tie up to unload. It is always full. Sometimes it is so full that a captain must wait days for a place. So, the ships that cannot get in drop anchor next door, in the wide bay of Acandia, which lies just east of the great harbour on the other side of the Mole of the Windmills. Acandia has no grand quays and no customs house. It is a place for waiting. A ship anchors there to rest her crew, to take on food and water, to mend a sail or sit out a storm, and then she moves on. In the town the old people say that even King Richard of England, the one they call the Lionheart, once anchored his fleet at Rhodes for ten days, long before the Knights came, on his way to fight in the Holy Land. If kings used the anchorage, my grandfather says, it can’t be a bad place. And when the south-east wind blows, the best part of Acandia is the great stone breakwater out to sea, as long as a street. The waves hit it and fall back, and the ships behind it sleep as if in their mothers’ arms.

A ship at anchor cannot walk to the market. So a boy must row the market out to her. At dawn I load my little boat with two big barrels of fresh water from the spring, a basket of bread still warm from the baker, fruit when the season is good, and onions, olives and oil. Then I row from ship to ship, calling out in every language I know. I know five: Greek, Hebrew, Italian, a little Arabic and a little French. A Genoese captain buys my bread and a Venetian sailor wants my olives, and a boy from some far northern island, who has never seen an orange, buys one and holds it up to the sun. I get tired. My arms ache. But I am never bored, and by the end of the week I know the whole world, because the whole world, sooner or later, floats in Acandia. Above us, on the long Mole of the Windmills, the mills turn. There are at least twelve of them now. Grandfather says the very first windmills here were built by Genoese prisoners, hundreds of years ago, when the Genoese held Rhodes for two short years and then lost it. Whether that is true, I don’t know. But whenever I buy a loaf, I think of those prisoners.

When my boat is empty, I row home, tie her to the post, and walk through the Gate of Acandia, and I am in my own street. It is a strong gate. In front of it stands the Tower of Italy, which is round, like a barrel of stone. My father says it was built after the Egyptian fleet attacked Rhodes in 1444. The Grand Master of that time, Jean de Lastic, won, and afterwards he rebuilt the walls here. Later a Grand Master named Zacosta decided that the Knights of the Italian tongue would guard this stretch of wall, which is why the tower is called the Tower of Italy. I have met some of these Italian Knights. They are loud, they laugh, and they always give me a coin when I carry their water. The gate has been moved, you know. Twice, at least. It used to stand somewhere else, in the old days, and it was called the Gate of Saint John, after a church where pilgrims came to drink from a holy spring. Then, in my father’s time, it was moved a little to the south-west, behind the new tower. A master mason named Manuel Kounte carved the date on it, 20 August 1457, and over the door there is a stone saint. My father took me to see it when I was small. He lifted me onto his shoulders. “Remember this,” he said. “You are looking at a wall that our community helped to build.”

This is the story my grandmother tells me, when the lamps are lit. “Long ago,” she says, “before your father was grown, the Knights wanted to make the walls around our quarter stronger. The Order needed money. They could have taken it, but instead they came to us and asked, and we agreed to pay. On the fourteenth of March, in the year 1452, the Grand Master wrote the decision down: our community would pay for the new walls, and for a tower, and for a bastion by the harbour. Our money went into those stones, David. This is our wall as much as it is theirs.” “Why did we pay?” I ask. “Because we are a part of Rhodes,” she says, “and a city must be defended by everyone who lives in it.” Then she goes quiet, and I know she is thinking the other thing, the thing she never says out loud for long. Sometimes the Order has needed the money of our people, and sometimes it has blamed us for lending it. Her own grandmother remembered the year an old Grand Master, Naillac, ordered our families to leave our old streets and move farther east, toward the bay. The order did not last. A later Grand Master cancelled it. But the families stayed where they were sent, and that is how our quarter grew.

Last summer, the Sultan’s army came. I was twelve. For weeks my ships were gone from the bay, and in their place there were enemy boats, so many that the sea looked like a field of masts. The great guns of the Ottomans thundered day and night. Our own Grand Master, Pierre d’Aubusson, was everywhere on the walls with his bandaged shoulder and his bright cloak. And the Sultan’s men struck at the very place where the old Choma used to be, the weak, old spot that has always been the town’s most dangerous place. They broke through the wall that protected our quarter. My mother pulled my sister and me into the cellar. She covered our ears. I will not tell you everything I heard. I will tell you that after a long, long time, the shouting changed, and the cannons grew fewer, and then somebody ran along our street shouting that the enemy was being thrown back. The Knights had won. The Sultan’s army sailed away. The first morning afterwards I ran down to the water and saw the bay of Acandia, empty, calm and blue, and I cried like a baby.

Rhodes has been busy ever since. Grand Master d’Aubusson has ordered a great new outwork built east of the old moat bridge, to guard against another breach at Acandia. In memory of the victory he is building a church called Saint Mary of the Victory, and another beside it for Saint Panteleimon. They say it is being paid for by his own money and by gifts. Our synagogue used to stand there, and years ago our community was asked to move it elsewhere, in exchange for a hundred ducats. We remember that, too. This year, they have decided to pull down the old mill of Acandia, and all the churches that stand outside the walls. “For defence,” the heralds say. Anything outside the wall could shelter an enemy, so it must go. I understand the reason, but it makes me sad. I used to buy flour from that mill.

Yesterday I rowed out as usual. The ships were back, one by one, the bread was warm, and the old Genoese captain asked, “Well, boy, what do you think of Rhodes?” I thought for a moment. “It’s a harbour,” I said. “It takes everyone in.” He laughed and gave me a double coin. I rowed home against the wind, singing.