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LINDOS Village
The archaeological site of Lindos extends outside and around the Acropolis and includes the following monuments:
Theatre. This is on the southwest side of the hill, below the Temple of Athena. The circular orchestra and the auditorium for the spectators were hollowed out of the the side of the hill. The proedries, honorary seats around the orchestra for officials, still survive. The auditorium has19 rows of seats below the diazoma and 7 above it. The first three rows were also intended for officials, and low walls at their sides separated them from the auditorium staircases. Only five of the nine cunei have survived. The theatre held 1,800 spectators.
Four-portico building . There are remains of a four-sided building in the extension of the skene of the Theatre. On the inside columns on all four sides supported a pitched roof and surrounded an open-air courtyard. The entrance on the northwest side had a porch (row of columns) which carried an architrave. The building held 1500-1700 spectators and was intended for religious ceremonies. At a later period the place was occupied successively by three Christian churches.
Boukopion. At Vigli, northeast of the Acropolis, was the Boukopion, a place of sacrifices as the name implies. 38 inscriptions on the rocks around identify the place. A naiskos built of small field stones with a temple, pronaos and kind of vestibule contained the votive offerings (clay and bronze figurines chiefly of oxen) to a deity at present unidentified (10th-9th c. BC).
The cemeteries of ancient Lindos spread over the surrounding district; the most important two funerary monuments are:
"The Tomb of Kleoboulos". This has no connection with the tyrant of Lindos, but was the tomb of a wealthy family. It is a circular structure with carefully built masonry and a vaulted roof. The doorway has a cornice decorated with palmettes. On the inside a bed hewn out of the rock was a kind of sarcophagus and had a cover, which has not survived (2nd-1st c. BC). Traces of wall-painting and the name "Ayios Aimilianos" testify to its conversion into a Christian church in a later period.
The Archokrateion. In the locality of Kampana at Krana, on the hill west of the Acropolis, there is a rock-cut tomb. The exterior facade has two stories; half-columns on the ground floor support an architrave with metopes and triglyphs, and on the upper floor pillars alternate with blind openings. On the first floor facade funerary altars were erected with the names of the dead inscribed on their bases. On the inside a passage led to a place for burial rituals. A total of 19 graves are cut into the walls of this chamber. On the sides of the hall pillars alternate with plaster panels. Its modern name of "Frangokklesia" suggests that in the time of the Knights it was used as a church.
The Naiskos of the Taxiarch Michael Stratelates below the village square. There is a shallow niche with a post-Byzantine representation of the Archangel Michael Psychopompos. The traces of earlier frescos date it to the Byzantine period.
West of it, near the remains of the Moslem cemetery , is a shallow niche containing the representation of a mounted saint, possibly 15th c. These remains are known as Ayios Georgios Kammenos.
The Church of the Panayia. The village church is oblong with a transverse nave of the free cruciform type. In 1489 Grand Master Pierre d'Aubusson gave money for the repair of the church and the construction of a groin-vaulted vestibule for it. The grand master's escutcheon and that of the commander of the castle, Pierre d'Aymer, can be seen on the south side of the smaller bell-tower. The frescos in the church are still preserved. The oldest inscription gives the date 1637. However, the painting in the church as a whole is listed as the work of the painter Gregorios from Symi, in 1779.
Ayios Georgios Chostos , an inscribed cruciform church with a cupola, is on the northwest edge of the village. In the apse of the sanctuary are five layers of fresco painting belonging to the post-Iconoclast period in the 2nd half of the 12th c., and to post-Byzantine times.
Ayios Georgios Pachymachiotis or Pano . This inscribed cruciform church with a cupola dates to 1394/95 according to an inscription on the south side of the front of the apse. It is decorated with full-figure saints in luxurious attire on the south wall of the church, hierarchs below the arch of the sanctuary and part of a representation of the Ascension in the vault.
Ayios Menas is the same type as Ayios Georgios Chostos . It has interesting late 12th c. frescos which are late Komnene in style but 15th c. in date.
Ayios Demetrios is a small barrel-vaulted church northeast of the entrance to the Acropolis. In a blind apse on its north wall can be seen a 15th c. St Demetrios on horseback.
In the locality of Vigli under the east cliff of the Acropolis the mosaic floor and marble tiling of an Early Christian basilica have been found, dating to the 5th c.
The modern village of Lindos. The entrance to the village is on the north, by its only square, which is now used as a carpark and has a large tree in the middle and a small fountain with many features from the period of the Knights. Rocks behind and above it recall ancient aqueducts. The graveyard is also at the entrance to the village, containing the church of Phaneromeni. A little beyond and below the square are the remains of the Moslem cemetery containing a few graves, whose typical grave markers have been demolished. The school has been moved to the side of the Megalo Yialo and the old building, beside the church of the Panayia, built in the neoclassical style, is now used by a local society for various cultural events.
The streets of Lindos are a maze of continuous buildings, chiefly with interior courtyards. Most of the houses have flat roofs, but some variety of types can be seen among the buildings that have not been affected by time and changes of use and shape. The material used in their construction is either the local quarried poros stone or field stones which have been plastered and whitewashed. The houses of Lindos all have features in common, but they can be divided into different classes: simple ones resembling the country cottages of the island, houses with a courtyard, and mansions.
The most representative mansions are known by the names of their owners: the House of Papakonstantis (1626), of Kyriakos Koliodos, of Lefteris Makris (1700), of Krikis (1700), of Georgios, of Marietta Markoulitsa (1700), of Ioannidis, etc. With the arrival of neoclassicism in Greece at the end of the 19th c, Lindos, Like Rhodes town, adopted some of the new architectural features: large windows facing the street, two-storey houses with tiled saddle roofs and gable ends. The doors in the yard walls have jambs and lintels reminiscent of ancient temples. New houses were also built, which no longer had anything in common with the old mansions.
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LINDOS Acropolis
A ccording to myth, the cult of Athena Lindia was pre-Hellenic, although this is not borne out by the sporadic excavation finds. The history of the sanctuary begins in the Geometric period (9th c. BC). In the Archaoc period the tyrant of Lindos, Kleoboulos, revived the cult and built a temple, probably on the site of an earlier one. The Archaic temple had the same Doric tetrastyle amphiprostyle plan as the subsequent one. The sanctuary was approached by a rough flight of steps. After it was burnt down in 342 BC, the present temple was built with the propylaea and the monumental staircase. The Hellenistic stoa is later. In the 3rd c. BC the cult of Zeus Polieus was introduced, although Athena remained the principal deity of the sanctuary. In the Roman period the priest Aglochartos planted olive trees on the spot, and according to an inscription the Sanctuary of Psithyros was built close to the Temple of Athena (2nd c. AD).
On the Acropolis of Lindos stands the Sanctuary of Athena Lindia, which includes the following buildings:
The Doric Temple of Athena Lindia , a tetrastyle amphiprostyle edifice (having a stoa with four columns at either end). It consists of a pronaos, cella and opisthodomos. Inside the temple is the table of offerings and the base of the cult statue of Athena. The columns of the opisthodomos are closed off by a balustrade, and the place would have served as a treasury chamber for safeguarding the temple money and sacred vessels. The temple was built of poros stone with plaster facing. The upper part (architrave and cornice) was painted with palmettes and meanders. It dates to the 4th c. BC.
Hellenistic stoa with lateral projecting wings with tetrastyle facades (end of 3rd c. BC). The stoa is 87 m long and consists of 42 columns in all. The wall of the stoa was not all one, but wasinterrupred in the middle for a space of ten columns so that the staircase of the Propylaea could be seen. The space in front of the stoa was extended at a later date and two underground cisterns were constructed to collect the rainwater from the stoa roof and the staircase of the propylaea. The square so formed was supported on arched constructions which are still visible (1st c. BC).
Relief of a Rhodian ship cut into the rock at the foot of the steps leading to the Acropolis. On the bow stood a statue of General Hagesander Mikkion, the work of the sculptor Pythokritos, who carved the Winged Victory of Samothrace, according to the inscription. The ship bears traces of paint. The relief (180-170 BC) is separated by a barrier.
Hellenistic staircase leading to the main archaeological area of the Acropolis. Beside the medieval staircase are remains of the Governor's Palace.
Propylaea of the Sanctuary . A monumental staircase leads to a ?-shaped stoa and a wall with five door openings. The lateral wings of the stoa had hexastyle prostyle facades (stoas with six columns) with pedimental roofs. A room opened behind each wing of the stoa; the room in the west wing was followed by three smaller chambers and that in the east wing by one. They were used for depositing the votive offerings to the goddess. These chambers opened onto an interior peristyle courtyard with a portico on three sides in which an altar stood. At a later period, in around 200 AD, the open fourth side of the courtyard was closed by an Ionic portico. The Propylaea were also built of poros stone and bear polychrome traces on the upper part. It dates to the 4th c. BC.
Remains of a Roman Temple in antis are preserved in front of the vaulted constructions. The temple stood on a raised basis, without an opisthodomos, and facing the Acropolis. It may have been intended for an Imperial cult (300 AD).
Semicircular inscribed dais of rosso antico , on which a bronze statue of Pamphylis, priest of the goddess, had stood with three smaller statues (end of 3rd c. BC). In the 1st c. BC statues of members of the same family were erected on the dais. In the sanctuary area near the stairway leading to the Acropolis and other points were bases and pedestals for votive statues, like that for the Archokrates brothers Lysistatos and Pythagoras, priests of the goddess (168-156 BC), and the pedestals for statues of the Roman imperial family: Tiberius, Drusus the Younger, Augustus and Germanicus (14-19 BC).
The Acropolis is surrounded by a Hellenistic wall contemporary with the Propylaea and the stairway leading to the entrance to the site. It is a carefully built ashlar construction with vertical and horizontal joints. A wall protected the Acropolis after the time of the Persian War. A Roman inscription mentions that the wall and square towers were repaired at the expense of P. Aelius Hagetor, the priest of Athena (2nd c. AD).
The Byzantine Castle was remodeled before 1317 by the Knights of St John . Except for a few parts of the Byzantine fortification, there is nothing still standing from before the time of the Knights. They rebuilt the fortifications from the beginning, making many changes and improvements. The few towers follow the natural conformation of the cliff. There was a pentagonal tower on the south side commanding the harbour, the settlement and the road from the south of the island. There was a large round tower on the east facing the sea and two more, one round and the other on a corner, on the northeast side of the enceinte. Today one of the towers at the southwest corner and one to the west of the Governor's Palace still survive. On the 30th of December 1522 the castle surrendered to the Turks. During the 16th and 17th centuries the use of cannon in warfare made it necessary to construct bastions at the three corners of the castle. A small Turkish garrison, which occupied it until 1844, carried out a few minor building works of a military nature.
A large medieval staircase leads to the Governor's Palace . In its present form it consists of two buildings, but originally there were three. It was restored by the Danish Archaeological Mission to serve as a museum and again later during the Italian occupation. On the terrace of the large stoa, on top of the cisterns hewn into the rock and the storage magazines of the Acropolis (1st c. BC), stands the church of St John. It is of the inscribed cruciform type. The end of the 11th c. has been suggested as the date of its construction, as have the 13th-14th c. It was apparently built on the ruins of a previous church, to judge from the architectural fragments that have been found on the Acropolis and which date to the 6th c. AD.
Excavations were carried out at Lindos in the years 1900-1914 and in 1952 by the Carlsberg Institute of Denmark, directed in the first period by Kinch and Blinkenberg and by E. Dyggve in the second. In the first period the archaeological site was excavated down to bedrock. All the buildings on the Acropolis were uncovered as well as the Lindos necropolis, which spread over the surrounding hills. In the second period a careful study was made of the buildings already revealed.
During the Italian occupation of the island (1912-1945) major restoration work was carried out on the Lindos Acropolis. The NE side of the temple was restored as well as the long SE wall and three of the four columns of the opisthodomos. The monumental staircase to the propylaea and many of the columns of the Hellenistic stoa are later reconstructions. The poros stone used is brittle and quickly damaged. Large surfaces were covered with concrete and re-erected. Bases and inscribed blocks were taken from their findspots and placed along the restored walls. Much of the work was done arbitrarily without taking into account the excavation evidence and without due care for the surviving architectural parts. In recent years a study has been carried out under the supervision of experts in the Ephorate to restore the ancient buildings on the Acropolis.
The picture of the archaeological site of Lindos is completed by the monuments that are to be seen outside the Acropolis.
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