Feraklos Castle

Feraklos Castle; Kάστρο Φεράκλου
	Charaki, Rhodes, Greece
	Feraklos Castle
Coordinates	36°10′12″N28°05′56″E / 36.169898°N 28.098902°E
Type	Fortress
Site information
Open to; the public	Yes
Condition	ruins
Site history
Built	15th century
Built by	Byzantine Empire, Knights Hospitaller
In use	no
Materials	Limestone

Last updated March 31, 2019

Feraklos Castle (Greek : Kάστρο Φεράκλου), also Feraklou (Φερακλού) and Faraklenon Castle (Φαρακλενόν Kάστρο),^[1] is a ruined medieval fortress, located on an 85 m-high hill overlooking the village of Charaki on the east coast of the island of Rhodes, Greece.

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece, Cyprus and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It has the longest documented history of any living Indo-European language, spanning more than 3000 years of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history; other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic, and many other writing systems.

Charaki is a small fishing village on the east coast of the island of Rhodes, Greece. In addition to its fishing trade, Charaki is also a small holiday resort, with the usual tavernas, restaurants and bars. Charaki has a small, picturesque bay with a number of holiday apartments in addition to its tavernas. More recently, the land behind the bay has been host to a small number of housing developments.

Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the South Aegean administrative region. The principal town of the island and seat of the municipality is Rhodes. The city of Rhodes had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and just off the Anatolian coast of Turkey. Rhodes' nickname is The island of the Knights, named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who once conquered the land.

History

The fortress was originally built in the Byzantine era. It was captured by the Knights Hospitaller on 20 September 1306, being their first possession on the island that would become their base. By 1408 it was in ruins, and was repaired under the Grand Masters Giovanni Battista Orsini (1467–76) and Pierre d'Aubusson (1476–1503) as a stronghold to protect the area, and particularly watch over the anchorages at the Charaki and Agia Agathi beaches nearby.^[1] After 1470, the Hospitallers abandoned all other fortifications on the island except for Feraklos, nearby Lindos, and the city of Rhodes, which in turn were further strengthened. A decree of 1474 prescribed that the Feraklos Castle was the place of refuge by the inhabitants of the villages of Malona, Salia, Katagros, Zinodotou, and Kaminari when there was danger.^[1]

The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical exonyms created after the end of the realm; its citizens continued to refer to their empire simply as the Roman Empire, or Romania (Ῥωμανία), and to themselves as "Romans".

The Hospitaller conquest of Rhodes took place in 1306–1310. The Knights Hospitaller, led by Grand Master Foulques de Villaret, landed on the island in summer 1306 and quickly conquered most of it except for the city of Rhodes, which remained in Byzantine hands. Emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos sent reinforcements, which allowed the city to repel the initial Hospitaller attacks, and persevere until it was captured on 15 August 1310. The Hospitallers transferred their base to the island, which became the centre of their activities until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1522.

The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, also known as the Order of Saint John, Order of Hospitallers, Knights Hospitaller, Knights Hospitalier or Hospitallers, was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headquartered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, on the island of Rhodes, in Malta and St Petersburg.

The fort was captured by the Ottoman Empire in 1523 after a long siege, a few months after the capture of Rhodes. The Ottomans did not use the castle and it has since been abandoned.

The Ottoman Empire, also historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or simply Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.

The Siege of Rhodes of 1522 was the second and ultimately successful attempt by the Ottoman Empire to expel the Knights of Rhodes from their island stronghold and thereby secure Ottoman control of the Eastern Mediterranean. The first siege in 1480 had been unsuccessful.

Layout

The fortress has an irregular polygonal layout, with a wall perimeter of 680 m encompassing an area of 1,700 square meters. The northern and western portions date to Byzantine times, but the rest are additions or modifications by the Hospitallers. A single gate and two cylindrical towers survive in the southern portion of the walls, along with a cistern in the interior.^[1]

A cistern is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by their waterproof linings. Modern cisterns range in capacity from a few litres to thousands of cubic metres, effectively forming covered reservoirs.

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References

1 2 3 4 "Κάστρο Φεράκλου: Περιγραφή" (in Greek). Greek Ministry of Culture. Retrieved 1 October 2016.

External links

Media related to Feraklos Castle at Wikimedia Commons

Gallery

View from the south. Evening
View from the south. Night
View from the west. Evening
Remains of the road to the Castle on the south side
The arch ruins
The ruins of the north wall
A fragment of the south wall
Olive tree at the Feraclos Castle ruins

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[odysseus_gr-1] 1 2 3 4 "Κάστρο Φεράκλου: Περιγραφή" (in Greek). Greek Ministry of Culture. Retrieved 1 October 2016.