Colossus of Rhodes – Rhodes Rhodos Rodos
It would be insulting if the first article of sightseeings wouldn’t refer to the Collosus of Rhodes and that’s because that magnificent statue that it was said to have reigned at the port of Rhodes, has been recorded as one of the seven wonders of the world. Although it doesn’t exist anymore so that we could refer to it as a ”sightseeing” it is worth knowing about it because it belongs to the great history of the island.
At the end of 4th century Rhodian celebrated a great victory. Demetrius Poliorcetes after besieged for a year the city finally had to flee and leave behind much of his equipment. The Rhodian decided to sell the equipment of Demetrius and use the money to erect a magnificent statue in honor of Helios who protected them. Some people say that Rhodian melt bronze and other metals of the mechanisms that Demetrius left behind to build the outside of the Colossus, and the vast scaffolding of the war mechanism became the scaffolding for the construction of the statue. The commencement of work, according to historians, is estimated at around 304 BC, and according to the historian Plinius, was completed in 12 years.
One of the students of Lyssipus, Harris is said to be the construstor of the statue although people say that he hadn’t had an experience in making a statue before. The statue had a height of 33 metres, was naked, wearing a crown on his head like rays of the sun (like the Statue of Liberty in New York). Presumably with the right hand he was protecting the eyes from the sun and the with the left he was holding a cloak. The legs of the statue were made first and the construction was made from the bottm to the top. The bronze figure reinforced inside with steel beams and stone columns. (The technique was copied for the construction of the Statue of Liberty New York, where copper is poured over steel-frame ‘). It took a lot of work to implement fully the inner shell (metal and stones) with the bronze ‘skin’ on the outside. The base of the statue was made of white marble. According to what a writer writes for the construction of the needed 12.7 tonnes and 7.6 tonnes of bronze iron.
While earlier believed that the Colossus stood in the entrance of the harbor (now Mandraki), archaeologists believe that this is impossible because of the magnitude of the statue and the relatively narrow port.Recent studies calculate the location of the statue just outside Mandraki. The huge statue had a tragic end. Tragically, 60 years after its completion, a violent earthquake ruined and scattered the statue in the sea. Colossus after the devastating earthquake remained intact for centuries and that’s because of an omen. Later, in 653 AD the Islamic Army invanded in Rhodes seized the bronze and carried it to Syria. There, it is said that a trader bought sheets of copper, and took them to the desert to melt them. It is also said that 900 camels needed to carry the bronze
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