Ruins of a late-medieval Knights Hospitallers‘ castle, mostly over built by houses of the village.

Castle Description

General Description
Koskinoú is located 10 km south of the city of Rhódos, 3 km from the east coast at the height of Cape Vódi. Surrounded by extensive new development areas, the historic center extends over a hill tongue between two valleys leading to the sea.
Albert Berg (1862, p. 135) enthusiastically described the location of the village: “Auf einem Vorsprunge des Bergrückens gelegen, beherrscht es nach Osten ein weites fruchtbares, in einer Meeresbucht mündendes Thal. Das Felsenjoch, an welches das Dorf südlich angelehnt ist, springt in kahlen steilen Massen in die See hinaus. Westlich zieht sich eine mit herrlichen Oelbäumen bewachsene Schlucht um den Felsen herum; darüber hinweg gelangt man südwestlich in bewässerte Thälchen, auf ein flaches, stellenweise zerklüftetes Hochland, wo mehrere Wege von der Stadt und der Westküste her münden.” (= “Located on a edge of the ridge, it dominates to the east a wide fertile valley, which flows into a bay. The Rock, to which the village is leaning south, jumps out into the sea in bare steep masses. To the west, a gorge covered with beautiful oil trees stretches around the rock; above it you reach southwest into irrigated thales, on a flat, in places rugged highlands, where several paths flow from the city and the west coast.”)
Berg, as a traveler who described many castles on Rhodes, did not perceive the extensive remains of the Kastro Koskinoú because of the houses built into it!

In the midst of the largely closed modern buildings – many houses have neoclassical court portals (19th/20th century) – there are extensive remains of the Knights Hospitallers’, the existence of which even many locals are not aware of. Their ruins stand at the southwestern corner of the particularly steep hill on the outskirts of the village. It was apparently a rectangular complex, whose largely inside and outside by attached houses covert enceinte of ashlar masonry is partly still up to 7 m high preserved. Windows, gates and hinges are not visible.
The Kástro’s interior is largely overbuilt by residential buildings, the German archeologist Ludwig Ross (1852) already saw 180 houses.

Access
Largely freely accessible, but partly because of the settlement (private land!) not to visit.

History of the castle
Written sources from 1439 and 1453 prove that Koskinoú was the seat of a Knights Hospitallers‘ castellania, a castle district (Stefanidou 2002, p. 210).

Other Info

Sources