Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/308

258 mariners approaching Rhodes from the north, rises steeply out of the plain: its top is a platform of which the level has probably been improved by art. Its greatest length is from north-east to south-west. This kind of table-land constantly occurs on the north side of the island. The hill of Phileremo was occupied by the Knights, and is frequently mentioned in the accounts of the siege.

On the summit is a small crypt with a tunnel vault. The roof and sides are covered with pictures in distemper, much decayed. Some of the figures are in armour, from the style of which, and the form of the escutcheons, I should infer that the date was about 1430. At the east end is represented the Saviour, and below, St. George; on the roof, the Crucifixion.

Bast of this subterraneous vault is a Gothic building with two rooms, side by side, covered with intersecting ribbed vaults. The windows are lancet, in a very pure Gothic, like our early English, but probably as late as 1360 in date. There are several other rooms which still retain their vaulting.$122$

I noticed here a block of marble on which were sculptured the arms of the Grand Master Fabrizio del Carretto, quarterly with those of the Order.

It was here that, in the time of the Knights, stood the celebrated church Notre Dame de Philerme, so often mentioned in the chronicles of the siege. To the shrine of this Madonna pilgrims resorted, and when- ever Rhodes was threatened by any great peril, her image was carried in solemn procession to the town.