St. Paul's Gate, Rhodes

Saint Paul’s Gate is an outer defensive work of the Old Town’s fortifications. The gate opens at the northwestern edge of Kolóna Harbor, historically the city’s inner and commercial port. This basin has long been animated by fishing boats and local maritime traffic, with Mandráki Harbor and the military harbor of Saint Nicholas lying immediately to the north.

The bastion associated with Saint Paul’s Gate is notable for its careful military design. It contains twelve cannon embrasures, placed to cover the waters of Mandráki and Kolóna, as well as the harbor entrance channel leading toward the Saint Nicholas mole. Like the Saint Athanasius Gate and the d’Amboise Gate, Saint Paul’s Gate was originally equipped with a drawbridge, operated by a system of beams and counterweights. Evidence of this mechanism survives in the form of vertical slots in the exterior wall, where the drawbridge beams were once housed.

On the inner side of the fortifications, within a semi-cylindrical tower immediately south of the gateway, a marble relief displays the coat of arms of Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller Pierre d’Aubusson, alongside those of the Order of Saint John and Pope Sixtus IV. Beneath these heraldic symbols is an effigy of Saint Paul the Apostle, accompanied by a Gothic inscription reading “Sanctus Paul”. Together, these elements date the construction of this section of the northern walls to the late 1470s, during a broader program of fortification and repair directed by d’Aubusson.

During World War II, Saint Paul’s Gate suffered heavy damage and came close to collapse. It was reconstructed in the early 1950s, preserving both its structural form and key decorative elements. Just east of the gate, the foundations of the former Naillac Tower, now vanished, provide a clear vantage point overlooking Mandráki Harbor, the fortifications, and the entrance to Kolóna.