Our growing gang of Gumbo guessers had a good time with this this week's extra puzzle, WITW #5.5: And it was nailed, by WorkerBee, who correctly placed it on the island of Rhodes. It's a view looking north on Pythagora Street, toward the main street, Sokratus.
Two blocks away, modern and ancient meet at the fountain
It was fascinating to see how many reasons were found for how many places—and none was spectacularly wrong. It's a good illustration of how much similarity lies under the differences we think of first!
We visited Rhodes in February, when only a few visitors were around—nothing like the legendary beach crowds that raise the island's population by orders of magnitude in the summer. In season, even parts of the old walled town, especially north of Sokratus, are swarmed, but our mid-winter break gave us the chance to feel we were not only in a different place, but at times in a different century.
Looking through the port gate into the Old Town
The Old Town includes a number of significant sites, including the archeological museum in the old Hospital of the Knights. After the fall of the Crusader kingdoms in Palestine, Rhodes became the base for one of the remaining orders of knights; they remained there until the 16th century when they were ousted by the Ottoman Empire and became the Knights of Malta. The New Town is...well...new.
Courtyard of the Hospital of the Knights
Rhodes is reachable by ferry from Athens/Piraeus and from Turkey, but it's only a 50-minute flight from Athens and fares are reasonable.
NEW PUZZLE TOMORROW MORNING!
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