By 1940, the number of Italians settled in the Dodecanese was almost 8,000, concentrated mainly in Rhodes. In 1947, after the Second World War, the islands came into the possession of Greece: as a consequence most of the Italians were forced to emigrate and all of the Italian schools were closed. However, their architectural legacy is still evident, especially in Rhodes and Leros.
History
View of the Market ("Nea Agora") of Mandraki, built during the Italian period.
In the 1930s, Mussolini embarked on a program of Italianization, intending to make the island a modern transportation hub that would facilitate the spread of Italian culture in Greece and the Levant. The Fascist program coincided with the construction of infrastructure.[1] The concrete-dominated architectural style of this period has consequently been largely demolished or remodeled, apart from the example of the Leros town of Lakki (founded by the Italians as Portolago), which remains an example of Italian Rationalism.[2]
From 1923 to 1936, governor Mario Lago was able to integrate the Greek, Turkish and Ladino Jewish communities of the island of Rhodes with the Italian colonists.[3]
Former Palazzo Governale
In the 1936 Italian census of the Dodecanese islands, the total population was 129,135, of which 7,015 were Italians. Nearly 80% of the Italian colonists lived in the island of Rhodes. Approximately 40,000 Italian soldiers and sailors were on military duty in the Dodecanese islands in 1940.
Fascist quadrumvirCesare Maria De Vecchi was appointed as governor of the Italian Aegean Islands in 1936. De Vecchi promoted a more forceful program of Italianization, which lasted until Italy's entry in World War II in 1940.[4]
During World War II, Italy joined the Axis Powers, and used the Dodecanese as a naval staging area for its invasion of Crete in 1940. After the surrender of Italy in September 1943, the islands briefly became a battleground between the Germans, British and the Italians (the Dodecanese Campaign). The Germans prevailed, and although they were driven out of mainland Greece in 1944, the Dodecanese remained occupied until the end of the war in 1945, during which time nearly the entire Jewish population of 6,000 was deported and killed. Only 1200 of these Ladino-speaking Jews survived by escaping to the nearby coast of Turkey. In the Treaty of Paris in 1947, the islands were ceded to Greece.
Disappearance of the Italian community
For the nearly 8,000 Italian colonists, after the Italian defeat in World War II, started a process of return to Italy and successive disappearance. The Dodecanese officially passed from Italy to Greece in 1947, and in that year all the Italian schools were closed. Some of the Italian colonists remained in Rhodes and were quickly assimilated. Currently, only a few dozen old colonists remain, but the influence of their legacy is evident in the relative diffusion of the Italian language mainly in Rhodes and Leros.
Architectural legacy
Teatro PucciniMen's High School (Scuola Maschile)Scuola FemminileMilitary building (today Police seat)Building in Rhodes city
In the 1920s, the Italians demolished the houses that were built in and around the city walls during the Ottoman period. They also turned the Jewish and Ottoman cemeteries into a green zone surrounding the Medieval Town. The Italians preserved what was left from the Knights' period, and destroyed all other Ottoman buildings that weren't of importance. Furthermore, in those years an "Institute for the study of the History and Culture of the Dodecanese region" was established, and major infrastructure work was done to modernize Rhodes. Buildings like the Aquarium were built, mainly in art deco style.
Indeed, in all the Dodecanese islands remains a huge architectural legacy[5] from the Italian colonists. Here are some examples:
The Grande Albergo delle Rose (now "Casino Rodos") built by Florestano Di Fausto and Michele Platania in 1927, with a mix of Arab, Byzantine and Venetian styles.
The Casa del Fascio of Rhodes, built in 1939 in typical fascist style. It serves now as the City Hall.
The Catholic church of San Giovanni, built in 1925 by Rodolfo Petracco, as a reconstruction of the medieval cathedral church of the Knights of St. John.
The Teatro Puccini of the city of Rhodes, now called "National Theater", built in 1937 with 1,200 seats.
The Palazzo del Governatore in downtown Rhodes, built in 1927 in Venetian style. It now houses the offices of the Prefecture of the Dodecanese.
The Villaggio rurale San Benedetto, now Kolympia village, built in 1938 as a planned model village with all modern services.
The Community of Portolago (now Lakki) in the island of Leros, built in 1938 in typical Italian Deco style.
Antonicelli, Franco. Trent'anni di storia italiana 1915 - 1945. Mondadori. Torino, 1961.
Clogg, Richard. A Concise History of Greece. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, 2002.
Doumanis, Nicholas. Italians as "Good" Colonizers: Speaking Subalterns and the Politics of Memory in the Dodecanese, in Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. ISBN0-312-23649-2.
Manicone, Gino. Italiani in Egeo La Monastica. Casamari, 1989.
Pignataro, Luca. Le Isole Italiane dell'Egeo dall'8 settembre 1943 al termine della seconda guerra mondiale in "Clio. Rivista internazionale di studi storici", 3 (2001)
Pignataro, Luca. Il tramonto del Dodecaneso italiano 1945-1950 in "Clio. Rivista internazionale di studi storici", 4 (2001)
Pignataro, Luca Ombre sul Dodecaneso italiano in "Nuova Storia Contemporanea" 3 (2008)
Pignataro, Luca Il Dodecaneso italiano, con appendice fotografica, in "Nuova Storia Contemporanea" 2 (2010)
The Italian empire before WWII is shown in red. Pink areas were annexed/occupied for various periods between 1940 and 1943. Italian concessions and forts in China are not shown.
The Dodecanese are a group of 15 larger and 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Turkey's Anatolia, of which 26 are inhabited. This island group generally defines the eastern limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the wider Southern Sporades island group.
The Aegean Islands are the group of islands in the Aegean Sea, with mainland Greece to the west and north and Turkey to the east; the island of Crete delimits the sea to the south, those of Rhodes, Karpathos and Kasos to the southeast. The ancient Greek name of the Aegean Sea, Archipelago, was later applied to the islands it contains and is now used more generally, to refer to any island group.
Kalymnos is a Greek island and municipality in the southeastern Aegean Sea. It belongs to the Dodecanese island chain, between the islands of Kos and Leros : the latter is linked to it through a series of islets. Kalymnos lies between two and five hours away by sea from the island of Rhodes.
Leros, also called Lero, is a Greek island and municipality in the Dodecanese in the southern Aegean Sea. It lies 317 kilometres from Athens's port of Piraeus, from which it can be reached by a nine-hour ferry ride or by a 45-minute flight from Athens. It is about 32 kilometres (20 mi) from Turkey. Leros is part of the Kalymnos regional unit. It has a population of 7,992 (2021).
Kastellorizo is the easternmost Greek island and is situated in the Eastern Mediterranean. It lies about 2 miles (3 km) from the Anatolian coast (Lycia), more or less halfway between Rhodes and Antalya.
The Battle of Leros was the central event of the Dodecanese campaign of the Second World War, and is widely used as an alternative name for the whole campaign. After the Armistice of Cassibile the Italian garrison on the Greek island Leros was strengthened by British forces on 15 September 1943. The battle began with German air attacks on 26 September, continued with the landings on 12 November, and ended with the capitulation of the Allied forces four days later.
The Italian Islands of the Aegean were an archipelago of fourteen islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, that—together with the surrounding islets—were ruled by the Kingdom of Italy from 1912 to 1943 and the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. When the Kingdom of Italy was restored, they remained under formal Italian possession until they were ceded to Greece in 1947 under the Treaty of Paris.
The Dodecanese campaign of World War II was an attempt by Allied forces to capture the Italian Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea following the Armistice with Italy in September 1943, and use them as bases against the German-controlled Balkans. Operating without air cover, the Allied effort was a costly failure, the whole of the Dodecanese falling to the Germans within two months. The Dodecanese campaign, lasting from 8 September to 22 November 1943, resulted in one of the last major German victories in the war.
The Battle of Kos was a brief battle in World War II between British/Italian and German forces for control of the Greek island of Kos, in the then Italian-held Dodecanese Islands of the Aegean Sea. The battle was precipitated by the Allied Armistice with Italy. German forces with strong air support quickly overwhelmed the Italian garrison and the recent British reinforcements, denying the Allies a base to attack the German presence in the Balkans and leading to the expulsion and death of the island's Jewish population.
Imperialism, colonialism and irredentism played an important role in the foreign policy of Fascist Italy. Among the regime's goals were the acquisition of territory considered historically Italian in France and Yugoslavia, the expansion of Italy's sphere of influence into the Balkans and the acquisition of more colonies in Africa. The pacification of Libya (1923–32), the invasion of Ethiopia (1935–36), the invasion of Albania (1939), the invasion of France (1940), the invasion of Greece (1940–41) and the invasion of Yugoslavia (1941) were all undertaken in part to add to Italy's national space. According to historian Patrick Bernhard, Fascist Italian imperialism under Benito Mussolini, particularly in Africa, served as a model for the much more famous expansionism of Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.
The 50th Infantry Division "Regina" was an infantry division of the Royal Italian Army during World War II. The Regina was formed on 1 March 1939 in the Italian Islands of the Aegean and entitled to the Queen. After the announcement of the Armistice of Cassibile between Italy and the Allies on 8 September 1943 the division fought Wehrmacht forces in the Battle of Rhodes. The majority of the division surrendered on 11 September 1943, while the III Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment "Regina" resisted the Germans on Leros until 16 November 1943.
Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the ninth largest island in the overall Mediterranean Sea. 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 the city of Rhodes, which had 50,636 inhabitants in 2011. In 2022, the island had a population of 125,113 people. It is located northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens. Rhodes has several nicknames, such as "Island of the Sun" due to its patron sun god Helios, "The Pearl Island", and "The Island of the Knights", named after the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, who ruled the island from 1310 to 1522.
Mario Lago was an Italian statesman and diplomat.
Florestano Di Fausto was an Italian architect, engineer and politician who is best known for his building designs in the Italian overseas territories around the Mediterranean. He is considered the most important colonial architect of the Fascist age in Italy and has been described as the "architect of the Mediterranean". Uncontested protagonist of the architectural scene first in the Italian Islands of the Aegean and then in Italian Libya, he was gifted with a remarkable preparation combined with consummate skills, which allowed him to master and to use indifferently and in any geographical context the most diverse architectural styles, swinging between eclecticism and rationalism. His legacy, long neglected, has been highlighted since the 1990s.
The Battle of Rhodes took place between Italian and German forces for the control of Rhodes, a Greek island in the Italian (1912–1943) Dodecanese islands in the Aegean Sea. The Italian authorities in Rome had been negotiating the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies and the Germans had been manoeuvring to launch a coup in Italy and Italian-garrisoned areas in southern Europe, at the first sign of treachery to the Axis. German troops had been sent to Rhodes with tanks, artillery and air support. The British deception Operation Mincemeat intended to divert German attention from Sicily may have added to German apprehensions over the Aegean area.
Lakki, population 1990, also known by its former name Portolago, is a community on the Greek island of Leros, in the Dodecanese, at the head of Lakki Bay.
Luigi Mascherpa was an Italian admiral during World War II. He led the Italian defense during the Battle of Leros and was later executed by the Italian Social Republic.
Mario Soldarelli was an Italian general during World War II.
Armando Bernabiti was an Italian architect.
Rodolfo Petracco was an Italian architect.
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