Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/307

Rh , December 10, 1853.

of the pleasantest excursions in the neighbourhood of Rhodes is to the pretty village of Trianda, distant about five miles from the city, on the road to Villa Nova. This road, issuing from the Neomaras, passes along the shore, up to the foot of St. Stephen's Hill. Thence, making a bend to the west at the distance of about half an hour from the town, it passes along the side of a marsh, where, according to the local legend which Schiller has immortalized, Dieudonnc de Gozon slew the tei'rible dragon.$121$ Beyond this marsh the shore bends round to the north, forming the bay of Trianda, a fair anchorage in a south wind. The village is scattered over a plain at a little distance from the shore. Here the Knights passed their villeggiatura during the summer months in pyrgi surrounded by gardens. Many of these houses still remain in fair preservation. They are built of stone, in the same simple style of military Gothic as the houses in the town of Rhodes.

In some of these pyrgi the entrance-door was anciently on the second story, to which there was no access but by a drawbridge communicating with a detached flight of stone steps.

Trianda lies at the foot of a hill called Phileremo, or Rhoda Vecchia, the site of the ancient Acropolis of lalysos. This hill, which is a familiar seamark to