The Rhodes Old Town Regeneration
The Rhodes project is an urban regeneration initiative focused on the medieval city of Rhodes, capital of the Greek island of the same name and a World Heritage Site. Many of the historic center’s residential and commercial buildings were abandoned following drastic upheavals that impacted the urban population during and after World War II. Hundreds of buildings in the historic center lie abandoned, with the city’s vitality anchored in the new town.
The Juderia was such an alive place. It was alive with scent, color, taste, movement, sound – so much sound, for so many hours of the day” Stella recounts being awakened early by the first call to prayer in the morning from the minaret that towered over the mosque nearby. She remembers the gurgle of coffee being made, and “threaded all through the day, singing: as children walked to school and back, as babies were put down for their naps, as young people gathered, and as women cooked or, later, as they embroidered deep into the night.” (31)
Micheal Frank, p.31, “One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World” (2022)
One significant community of the Old Town were Sephardic Jews who settled there following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in 1492. The community thrived there for over four hundred years under the Crusaders, the Ottomans and the Italians, remarkably retaining the customs and language of their Spanish forebears until their deportation on a single day, July 23, 1944, when the entire community of 1,700 or more people was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where the great majority perished. After the war, the properties in the Jewish Quarter, the Juderia, were offered to surviving community members by Greek authorities, but few returned. Most of the quarter remains vacant except for some houses leased by the Greek Archeological Service.
CHiFA will develop a record of the Jewish community’s life in the city, plan for the use of properties to interpret the history of the Old Town and support educational activities in the city.
Partners
- Jewish Community of Rhodes
- National Technical University in Athens
- Municipality of Rhodes
