Rectangular late-medieval or early modern towerhouse in Ialysos (aka Trianda) in Rhodes.

Tower Description

General Description
Trianda is located on the west coast, 8 km southwest of the city of Rhodes, in the plain at the foot of Mt. Filerimos. The village was considered one of the most beautiful on Rhódos by travellers of the 19th century (cf. Ludwig Ross 1845, p. 95). The English archaeologist Charles T. Newton (1865) wrote: “The village is scattered over a plain at a little distance from the shore. Here the knights passed their villeggiatura during the summer months in pyrgi surrounded by gardens. Many of these houses still remain in fair preservation. They are built of stone, in the same simple style of military Gothic as the houses in the town of Rhodes.”

In Trianda, where many gardens were located in the late Middle Ages, near the capital city, knights, nobles and wealthy Italian merchants owned country houses. As late as the 1840s, the archaeologist Prof. Ludwig Ross (1845, p. 95) saw such houses, “to a large part still from the knightly era, built of hewn cuboids and provided with bay turrets for defence at the corners”
(German original text: „zu einem großen Theile noch aus der Ritterzeit, aus behauenen Quadern erbaut und mit Erkerthürmchen zur Vertheidigung an den Ecken versehen“). Those miniature bay turrets were not suitable for defense, they were rather status symbols.

About these houses wrote the German traveler Albert Berg (1862, p. 110), to whom “τhe charming Trianda” seemed like “a tremendous garden of oil and orange trees, with hundreds of shimmering country houses” (German original text: „das reizende Trianda“, wie „ein ungeheurer Garten von Oel- und Orangenbäumen, mit Hunderten schimmernder Landhäuschen“): “Many date back to the times of the Knights of St. John and, despite all their simplicity, have beautiful conditions; Cornices […] are finely drawn and carefully crafted. The houses have two floors and a flat roof. Windows and doors are small; on one narrow side of the elongated rectangle, a cute round turth on a beautifully profiled console usually jumps forward on the second floor”
(German: „viele stammen noch aus den Zeiten der Johanniter her und haben bei aller Einfachheit schöne Verhältnisse; Gesimse und Einfassungen sind fein gezeichnet und sorgfältig gearbeitet. Die Häuser haben zwei Stockwerke und ein flaches Dach. Fenster und Thüren sind klein; an der einen schmalen Seite des länglichen Rechtecks springt gewöhnlich im zweiten Stock ein niedliches rundes Thürmchen auf schön profilirter Console vor“).
Despite all the idyll described, however, some of the houses already showed signs of decay: “Many properties are now abandoned and seem to be ownerless; the wind blows through windows and doors, the gardens are overgrown; but others are still well maintained, because whoever can be among the Franks, Greeks and Turks, likes to swap the shadowless Kastro [the fortified city of Rhódos] with the cool, green Trianda, which absorbs the refreshing west wind, as it were” (German: „Viele Grundstücke sind jetzt verlassen und scheinen herrenlos; durch Fenster und Thüren streicht der Wind, die Gärten sind verwildert; andere aber sind noch jetzt wohlgepflegt, denn wer immer kann unter den Franken, Griechen und Türken, vertauscht gern im Sommer das schattenlose Kastro [die befestigte Stadt Rhódos] mit dem kühlen, grünen, den erfrischenden Westwind gleichsam auffangenden Trianda“); the place was “at all times because of its healing air and laughing gardens a favorite villaggiatur of the Rhodians” (ibid.).

Access
Not to be visited, but to be overlooked from all sides from streets.

History of the tower
The tower was most probably built during the Knights of St. John‘s (Hospitaller Knights‘) rule in the late 15th or early 16th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, several tower houses were ruinous or rebuilt, and today only a single tower house, probably from the Knights Hospitalers‘ period, is largely unchanged from the outside. The two-storey house with late Gothic rectangular windows and cornices, flat roof and small corner guard as a stately bearer of meaning stands on the main street, the thoroughfare to the airport (Leoforos Irakleidon).

Other houses have been rebuilt in a heavily modified form (cf. Gerola 1914, p. 324: „Case. – Le vecchie case, che gli scrittori ricordano sparse nella campagna e contrassegnate da una o più torricelle agli angoli, sono ora in buona parte rovinate o rimoderate [Rottiers, Rhodes, 34. – Guerin, Rhodes, 344. – Berg, Rhodus, II, 110. – Somni Picenardi, Itinéraire, 217]. Comunque deve trattarsi non di costruzioni dei Cavalieri, bensì quasi sempre di fabbriche posteriori, erette all’epoca turca imitando l’architettura franca“).

Some neoclassical houses in Trianda were created by the transformation of late medieval and early modern tower houses. Originally mostly two-storey, unplastered and with a flat roof, these were now plastered and received hipped roofs. The flat roofs supported a cover of rammed, clayey earth (patelia) over a wooden construction.

Other tower houses are located in the following streets:
Odos Dimokratias (οδός Δημοκρατίας),
Odos 9is Maiou (οδός 9ης ΜΑΐου) 56,
Odos Tharenou (οδός Θαρενου) / corner to Leoforos Irakleidon.

Other Info

Sources