St Anthony's Gate is the innermost gate on the north-western approach to the Old Town of Rhodes, the last doorway you pass through after crossing the moat at the Gate of Amboise and before you reach the Palace of the Grand Master. It belongs to the inner defences built by the Knights of St John to protect their own quarter, and it is a good place to understand how many layers of walls an attacker would have had to break through.
St Anthony's Gate at a glance
- Where: about 200 metres inside the Gate of Amboise, on the route from the New Town to the Palace of the Grand Master, at the edge of the Knights' quarter (the Collachium).
- Built: by the Knights of St John, who ruled Rhodes from 1309 to 1522; a coat of arms identified as that of Grand Master Antoni de Fluvià (Fluvian), who ruled from 1421 to 1437, is associated with the gate.
- What it is today: a pedestrian passage into the Old Town, part of the Medieval City of Rhodes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988.
- Time needed: 5–10 minutes, or 30 minutes if you walk the whole route from the Gate of Amboise to the palace and look at each layer of the defences.
The inner door of a fortified route
When the Knights Hospitaller took Rhodes in 1309, they turned the town into the headquarters of their order and divided it in two. The northern part, the Collachium, held the Palace of the Grand Master, the hospital, the inns of the national groups of knights and their main church, and it was separated from the rest of the town, where Greeks, Latins and Jews lived, by an inner wall. Around the whole city ran the outer walls and a wide moat, rebuilt again and again during the 15th and early 16th centuries as cannon made medieval defences obsolete. St Anthony's Gate is part of this inner system: an attacker who had forced the outer gate still had to fight through more walls and gates before reaching the Grand Master.
The defences faced their hardest tests in two Ottoman sieges. In 1480 the Knights held out for about three months; in 1522 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged the city for six months, and the Knights finally surrendered and left the island at the start of 1523. Rhodes then stayed Ottoman for almost four centuries. Italy took the island in 1912, and Italian troops are reported to have entered the Old Town along this route. After the Second World War Rhodes and the other Dodecanese islands joined Greece.
What to look for
- The pointed arch of the gate, built in the same honey-coloured stone as the rest of the Knights' walls.
- The coat of arms set into the masonry: the Knights marked their building works with the arms of the Order and of the Grand Master who paid for them, so look for carved shields wherever you walk in the Old Town.
- The thickness of the wall in the passage, which shows how solid even the inner defences were.
- The sense of sequence: look back towards the Gate of Amboise and forward towards the palace to see how the route was designed to slow down anyone coming in.
Two gates, one route
Most visitors walk through St Anthony's Gate without noticing it, because they are still thinking about the Gate of Amboise behind them. The Gate of Amboise, built in 1512, is the dramatic outer entrance with its bridge over the moat; St Anthony's Gate is the quieter inner one. Do not confuse it with the Gate of St Athanasios, a different gate on the southern side of the walls: the two names are sometimes mixed up in guidebooks and online.
Tips for your visit
- Walk the route in the right order: start outside the walls on the New Town side, cross the bridge at the Gate of Amboise and continue through St Anthony's Gate to the palace.
- Come in the morning or late afternoon; in summer the stone holds the heat in the middle of the day.
- Wear shoes with some grip: the old paving is uneven and worn smooth.
- Step aside for others in the passage, which can be narrow when tour groups pass through.
Nearby
- Palace of the Grand Master: the Knights' fortress-palace a few steps away, largely rebuilt by the Italians in the 1930s.
- Street of the Knights: the cobbled medieval street lined with the inns of the Order's national groups, running down from the palace.
- Gate of Amboise: the outer gate of 1512 with its bridge over the moat and the angel holding the Grand Master's arms.
- Mosque of Suleiman: the pink-plastered mosque at the top of Sokratous Street, founded after the Ottoman conquest.
See Rhodes with World City Trail
Our Rhodes scavenger hunt turns the old town into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops and takes around 2 hours, with about 30 minutes of walking. Among the places it includes are the Palace of the Grand Master and the Street of the Knights in the medieval Old Town. You can play in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish and Greek.
If you prefer a different format, there is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Rhodes.
Play the Rhodes scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Rhodes →
Play the outdoor escape game in Rhodes →
Facts checked in October 2026.