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Few Greek islands carry as much accumulated history as Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese and a place where the medieval and the Mediterranean collide with unusual force. The old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the best-preserved medieval settlements in Europe, its limestone walls and cobbled lanes laid out by the Knights of St John in the fourteenth century. The Street of the Knights, running from the harbour up to the Palace of the Grand Master, is so intact it reads less like a monument and more like a city that simply never stopped. Beyond those walls, the modern town spreads north towards the northernmost tip of the island, where the Aegean and the Mediterranean technically meet.

The island's geography does a great deal of the work in shaping how people spend their time here. Rhodes stretches roughly eighty kilometres from north to south, with the east coast offering calmer, shallower water and the west coast catching stronger winds off the open sea. That distinction matters in practice: the east coast, from Kallithea's art deco thermal springs down through Afandou and on to the dramatic acropolis at Lindos, is where most of the island's celebrated bays sit. Anthony Quinn Bay, named after the actor who fell so deeply for the place he reportedly bought land nearby, is one of the most photographed inlets in the Aegean, its clear turquoise water framed by volcanic rock.