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Rhodes has a reputation problem — not that the island is bad, but that the reputation undersells it.
The summer image (beach resorts, package holidays, Faliraki nightlife) sits next to the reality: 300km of coastline running from organised beach clubs to coves you can only reach by boat, one of the finest medieval cities in the world, an ancient acropolis at Lindos that outperforms most Aegean equivalents for sheer drama, and Symi — 45 minutes away and arguably the most photogenic harbour in Greece. The reality wins comprehensively, for anyone paying attention.
Here's the practical version of that. Most of what makes Rhodes worth a week is reached by boat. The sheltered east coast — Anthony Quinn Bay, Kallithea Springs, the Traganou caves — is the best of the island's water and it's easiest from the sea. Lindos looks entirely different approached from below its acropolis than it does arriving by road. Symi isn't on Rhodes at all. That's why Rhodes boat tours are the first booking most visitors should make, and why this guide leads with them.
The exception is the Old Town, which is the one thing on Rhodes that a guide genuinely transforms — 2,400 years of layers stacked on top of each other, and a street plan built to confuse. We cover that below too.
This guide covers what's worth booking, what's better done independently, and — for Symi and Lindos especially — how to tell which is which.
Are Rhodes Tours Worth It?
Not always, and the answer differs more by activity here than on most Greek islands.
Boat tours — yes, for almost everyone. This is the clearest case on the island. The east-coast bays are either awkward or impossible to reach by road, the operators all run east because the Meltemi keeps that side sheltered, and the day-cruise format (three or four swim stops, BBQ, unlimited drinks for €60–€85) is genuinely good value for a full day. If you book one thing on Rhodes, book a boat.
The Old Town — yes, once. Walkable and beautiful without a guide, but narratively opaque. The medieval city is a maze by design — the street pattern was built to confuse attacking armies — and without someone explaining the Knights Hospitaller, the Ottoman mosques built over Byzantine churches, and the Jewish Quarter, you're walking through history that looks impressive but doesn't speak. A 2.5-hour guided walk early in your trip makes everything you do independently afterwards more legible.
Symi — it depends, and this is a real choice. The organised day trip handles the crossing, gives you 3–4 hours in Gialos and usually adds a swim stop at St George's Bay. But the scheduled ferry runs daily in season, costs roughly half, and lets you take an early boat out and a late one back — which is how you see Symi without the day-trip crowds. Neither is wrong. We break down the trade-off in the Symi section below.
Lindos — the guide is optional, the transport isn't. The village explains itself and the Acropolis works with an audio guide. What matters is how you get there and what time you arrive: it's 55km south, and the cruise groups land at 10am. The tour's real value is arriving before them. See the transport comparison for the options.
The interior and Butterfly Valley — tour or hire car, no third option. There's no practical public transport, and the valley in particular is easy to combine with Lindos on a single organised day.
The short version: book a boat tour and a guided Old Town walk. Decide Symi on whether you'd rather have the swim stop or the extra hours. Do Lindos however gets you there before ten. Everything else is optional.
Rhodes Tours: Quick Reference Table
Rhodes Boat Tours: Day Cruises & the East Coast
Best for: Beach-focused travelers; active visitors; anyone wanting the island's coast from the sea
Duration: 4–8 hours
Price range: €40–€80 per person
Book: Rhodes Boat Day Trip to east coast
Rhodes's east coast — Anthony Quinn Bay, Kallithea Springs (a restored art-deco Ottoman thermal spa), Tsambika Beach, the Blue Lagoon — is one of the most scenic stretches of coastline in the Dodecanese, and best experienced from the water. Organized boat cruises from Mandraki Harbor cover 3–4 coastal stops with swim breaks, snorkeling at coral-rich bays, and lunch or meal service on board.
Anthony Quinn Bay — named after the actor who fell in love with the location while filming The Guns of Navarone here and reportedly purchased the bay — is a sheltered cove with unusually clear water and abundant underwater life (sea anemones, octopus, colorful reef fish visible to snorkelers without diving gear).
Kallithea Springs — an Italian-built art-deco thermal complex from the 1920s, recently restored, set among pines and cycads above a sheltered pebble cove — is one of the most architecturally distinctive sites on any Greek island. The approach by sea gives the full exterior view that a road visit doesn't.
Where boats leave from. Almost everything departs from Mandraki Harbour — the historic port with the three windmills — or the commercial harbour beside it. Get there 20 minutes early in season if you want a shaded seat on deck; they aren't allocated.
Why every cruise goes east. When the Meltemi blows through July and August, the west coast gets choppy while the east stays sheltered — which is exactly why the operators run east. It also means boat days are rarely cancelled here, unlike the Cyclades. Rhodes gets almost no rain from June to September.
Timing. Morning departures (9–10am) have the calmest water and the best light for photographs. If you're prone to seasickness, take the morning boat.
How far ahead. A week in July and August; two to three days in May, June and September.
Rhodes Sunset Cruises
Best for: Couples; anyone who's already had a full beach day; travellers on a budget
Duration: 3 hours ·
Price: €30–€55 per person ·
Departs: Mandraki Harbour
Book: Sunset tour with views and picturesque scenery of the island of Rhodes
The sunset cruise is the best-value boat trip on Rhodes, and the one most visitors book second. Three hours, a swim stop — usually at Kallithea Springs, the restored 1920s art-deco thermal complex that looks like nowhere else in Greece — then the sail back along the east coast as the light goes. Most include a Greek BBQ or dinner on board and unlimited drinks, which is why they cost a third of what a full-day cruise does and still feel like the better evening.
Day cruise or sunset cruise? They cover much the same coastline, so it comes down to what you want from it. The day cruise (6–8 hours, €60–€85) gives you three or four swim stops, the clearest water for snorkelling at Anthony Quinn Bay, and the best light for photographs — book it if swimming is the point. The sunset cruise (3 hours, €30–€55) is shorter, cheaper, more social, and leaves your day free for Lindos or the Old Town. If you're doing both, do the day cruise first.
The catamaran upgrade is worth considering: more deck space, buffet rather than plated food, and far fewer people. Expect €80–€95 rather than €50.
⚠️ Book sunset cruises earlier than you'd think. Counter-intuitively they sell out faster than day cruises, because they're cheaper and shorter, so they draw both couples and families. A week ahead in July and August; two to three days in May, June or September.
Rhodes Old Town Walking Tour (Guided)
Best for: Every visitor to Rhodes; history-minded travelers; anyone wanting to understand the city before exploring independently
Duration: 2.5–3.5 hours
Price range: €20–€45 per person group tours; €80–€150 for private
Book: Rhodes Old Town Walking Tour
The Medieval Old Town of Rhodes is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for reasons that reveal themselves slowly. It's not a single monument but a complete medieval city — 4 km of intact fortifications built by the Knights of St. John (the Knights Hospitaller) between 1309 and 1522, with the street plan, the public buildings, and much of the residential architecture surviving.
The Ottoman period added mosques, hammams, and covered markets over the Christian city; the Jewish community built synagogues and a distinct quarter; Byzantine churches predate both. The result is a city that has been continuously inhabited for 2,400 years and looks like all of them at once.
The Street of the Knights (Ippoton Street) is the most intact medieval street in Europe. Paved with river stones, lined with the inns (auberges) of each of the eight nations of the Knights Hospitaller — France, England, Germany, Italy, Aragon, Auvergne, Provence, Castile — it leads from the harbor to the Palace of the Grand Master.
A guide who explains the structure of the Knights Hospitaller (a military monastic order that controlled Rhodes for 213 years), the political relationships between the nations, and the siege of 1522 that finally expelled them to Malta turns a photogenic cobbled street into a comprehensible historical narrative.
The Palace of the Grand Master — the headquarters and residence of the order's leader, heavily restored by the Italians in the 20th century — is the visual climax of the Old Town. The interior courtyard, the marble floors, and the Byzantine and Hellenistic mosaics relocated from the island of Kos by the Italian administration are worth seeing; a guide contextualizes the problematic nature of the restoration alongside its undeniable impact.
The Jewish Quarter is the most moving and least-visited part of the Old Town. The Kahal Shalom Synagogue — the oldest working synagogue in Greece, built in 1577, restored and still operational — stands in a quarter where 1,700 Jewish residents lived before being deported to Auschwitz in 1943. A guided walk that includes the quarter's history connects the medieval city to one of the 20th century's most significant tragedies. This is not cheerful tourism, but it is important.
The Ottoman layer — the Suleiman Mosque, the Turkish Library, the covered marketplace, the hammam — is one of the most complete examples of Ottoman urban adaptation in Greece. The Ottomans built over or converted most Christian buildings after 1522 but left the fundamental street plan intact. The physical palimpsest of this — Byzantine churches with minarets added, Crusader buildings with Ottoman arches — is most clearly explained with a guide who knows which layer belongs to which century.
Best for: Every visitor as a first experience of the island. The 2.5-hour guided walk is the foundation on which the rest of your Rhodes time builds.
Book the Rhodes Old Town walking tour on GetYourGuide | Find hotels in Rhodes on Booking.com
Private Rhodes Tours
Best for: Families; travellers with a specific historical interest; cruise passengers on a clock; anyone who wants pace control
Duration: 2–8 hours depending on format
Price range: €80–€200 per group (private walking) · €250–€500 per group (full island) · €150–€350 per group (Lindos)
A private licensed guide gives you three things a group tour can't: the pacing, the questions, and a narrative focus built around what you actually care about. Split across 2–4 people the per-person cost often lands close to a good group tour, which is why private is frequently the rational choice on Rhodes rather than the indulgent one.
There are three formats worth knowing about.
Private Old Town Walking Tour
2–3 hours · €80–€200 per group
The Old Town is where a private guide pays off most, because the city has more layers than any group itinerary has time for. Dimitris — a guide cited consistently in traveller reviews for combining exhaustive historical knowledge with storytelling and genuine responsiveness to questions — represents the kind of guide whose private half-day changes how you understand the rest of the island.
For families with mixed ages, for travellers with a specific interest (Byzantine architecture, Ottoman Rhodes, the Jewish Quarter), or for anyone who wants to spend two hours on one thing and five minutes on another, the private format is worth the premium. A group tour cannot do that.
Book a Private Guided walking tour of the Medieval City
Private Full-Island Tour (Best of Rhodes)
6–8 hours · €300–€500 per group (group format €80–€180 per person)
The full-island format — private vehicle with licensed guide, Old Town in the morning, Lindos in the afternoon, with coastal stops and olive oil or wine tastings en route — is the most efficient way to cover the island's highlights in one day.
The best operators run itineraries that begin at the D'Amboise Gate (the most dramatic Old Town entrance, on the northwestern wall), take in the Street of the Knights, the Palace and Mandraki Harbour, then drive south through the village landscape and Anthony Quinn Bay to Lindos.
What the private format buys you is timing that group tours can't offer: arriving at the Lindos Acropolis at 9am rather than 11am when the cruise groups land, spending an extra twenty minutes at a coastal viewpoint, or swapping the standard pottery-shop stop — which appears in several group itineraries — for a working wine estate.
The private full-city variant adds the ancient Acropolis of Rhodes on Mount Smith — the Temple of Apollo, the Hellenistic stadium, the marble Odeon in a hillside park above the modern town — to the medieval layer, giving the island's full arc from the 5th century BC to the Italian occupation in a single six-hour sequence.
Book the Best of Rhodes Private Tour
Private Lindos Tour
4–6 hours · €150–€350 per group
A private guide and driver for Lindos alone, rather than as half of an island day. The advantage is entirely about arrival time: the Acropolis is a different experience before 10am or after 4pm than it is in the middle of the day, and a private driver is the only format that reliably gets you there in those windows.
Best for families, for anyone who wants the Acropolis without the 297 steps under midday sun, and for travellers who'd rather spend the afternoon in the village than back on a coach.
Best for: Families, travellers with a specific historical interest, cruise passengers, and anyone who'd rather ask questions than listen to a script.
Book here
Lindos Acropolis Tours
Best for: Every visitor to Rhodes with more than one day; history enthusiasts; anyone who wants the island's most dramatic view
Duration: 4–7 hours (combined transport and site)
Price range: €20–€60 per person group tours; €150–€350 private
Book: Lindos Village & Acropolis Guided Tour on GetYourGuide
Lindos is the island's second city, 55 km south of Rhodes Town, and the most dramatically positioned settlement on the island. The Acropolis — a hilltop fortified site with layers running from the 6th century BC through Byzantine, Crusader, and early modern periods — towers 116 meters above the village, visible from the sea before the village itself appears. The view from the top: the whitewashed Lindos village cascading down the hillside below, Saint Paul's Bay (a near-perfect circular harbor where St. Paul supposedly landed in 51 AD) to the south, and the Aegean in every other direction.
Lindos is 55km south of Rhodes Town. The buses run frequently in season from the Rhodes Town terminal but stop at the top of the village, leaving a walk down. If you want the Acropolis before the cruise groups arrive at 10am, the tour and taxi options are the only ones that get you there early enough.
For the village itself — where to eat, St Paul's Bay, the beaches — see our Lindos guide.
The guided walk to the Acropolis ascends 297 steps from the village square. The route passes a 280 BC relief of a Greek trireme carved into the rock face (an indication of Lindos's ancient naval power), through the Byzantine and Crusader gate complex, and into the Hellenistic sanctuary of the Temple of Athena Lindia — built by the same marble and engineering tradition that produced the Parthenon, standing in an Aegean landscape rather than an urban one.
The Temple of Athena predates the Parthenon by a century. A guide who covers the Doric Stoa, the Propylaean ruins, and the Crusader fortifications simultaneously explains why the site is called "the most complete Doric temple complex outside Athens" in the archaeological literature.
Timing matters significantly at Lindos. The site receives cruise-ship groups from 10 AM to early afternoon — arriving before 9 AM or after 4 PM produces a materially different experience. The late-afternoon light on the Acropolis, with the sun behind you and the sea lit gold in front, is specific to that time slot and worth arranging your day around.
Best for: Every Rhodes visitor with 2+ nights. Lindos is the island's most significant experience after the Old Town.
Symi Day Trip from Rhodes: Tour or Ferry?
Getting there: 45–60 min by fast boat from Rhodes Town (Mandraki / commercial harbour) Cost: €45–€80 organised day trip · €25–€45 return on the scheduled ferry
Symi is the best day trip from Rhodes, and unusually you have a genuine choice about how to do it.
Take the organised day trip if you want it handled — a return crossing timed to give you 3–4 hours in Gialos, usually a swim stop at St George's Bay on the way back, and commentary on the sponge-diving history and the Panormitis Monastery. It's the simpler option and the swim stop is a real addition the scheduled ferry can't offer.
Book Symi Island & Panormitis Monastery Day Trip by Boat
Take the scheduled ferry if you'd rather set your own hours. Several operators run the Rhodes–Symi route daily in season, the crossing is 45–90 minutes depending on the boat, and going independently lets you catch an early departure and a late return — which is how you get Symi without the day-trip crowds, and how you see Chorio in the evening light after the tour boats have gone. Check timetables and book ahead in July and August; schedules thin out considerably in shoulder season.
Our honest take: if you want the swim stop and zero planning, book the tour. If you want the island rather than the harbour, take the first ferry out and the last one back — you'll get twice the day for less money.
For what to actually do once you're there — Gialos, the 500-step Kali Strata to Chorio, Panormitis, the beaches — see our Symi travel guide.
Day Trips from Rhodes
Lindos by Boat from Rhodes Town
Duration: Full day | Departure: Mandraki Harbor, Rhodes Town
Book: Boat Day Trip to Lindos on GetYourGuide
The boat approach to Lindos — 2 hours south along the east coast, past Anthony Quinn Bay and Tsambika Beach — provides a significantly different experience from the road version. The coastal geology of Rhodes's eastern shore, the scale of the island viewed from the sea, and the arrival into Lindos harbor looking up at the Acropolis above you produce an introduction to the site that no road approach matches. The 3-hour stop in Lindos allows the Acropolis visit plus beach time; the return includes swim stops at Tsambika Blue Lagoon and Anthony Quinn Bay.
Butterfly Valley & Lindos Guided Day
Duration: Full day | Departure: Hotel pickup across Rhodes
Book: Butterfly Valley and Seven Springs Nature Day Trip
Butterfly Valley (Petaloudes) — a lush gorge in the island's interior, an hour from Rhodes Town, where thousands of Jersey tiger moths congregate among the plane trees from June through August — is one of Rhodes's most unusual natural experiences. The valley is entirely different from the island's coastal and archaeological character: shaded, humid, filled with the sound of water, and punctuated by the orange and black wings of moths on every surface. The combined format with Lindos gives a full-day itinerary of genuine variety — natural spectacle in the morning, ancient archaeology in the afternoon — that neither site provides independently.
How to Choose and Book Rhodes Tours
When to book: Old Town walking tours in peak season (July–August) fill up 3–5 days ahead for the better guides. Private full-day tours with well-reviewed drivers should be booked 5–7 days ahead. The Symi fast-boat trips have multiple daily departures and can usually be booked 24–48 hours ahead, though peak-season weekends benefit from more advance notice. Lindos boat trips from Rhodes City: 48–72 hours ahead in peak season.
Cruise passengers: Rhodes is a major cruise port, and the Old Town, Lindos, and the Symi day trip are all common cruise excursions. The advantage of booking independently through GetYourGuide rather than through the ship is flexibility — private tour timing, smaller groups, and the ability to spend more time at the sites you find most interesting.
Where to book: GetYourGuide covers the main Rhodes operators for walking tours, private tours, and boat trips. For Symi and inter-island ferry connections, operators at Mandraki Harbor are accessible directly or through advance online booking. For ferry connections to other Dodecanese islands and the mainland, use Ferryscanner.
Plan your Rhodes trip
- Rhodes Travel Guide — the complete island guide
- Things to Do in Rhodes — full Rhodes activity guide
- Where to Stay in Rhodes — Old Town vs resort stays
- Best Restaurants in Rhodes — where to eat well in the Old Town and beyond
- Symi Travel Guide — the Symi overnight option
- Dodecanese Islands Guide — Rhodes in its island group context
- Best Greek Islands to Visit — full island rankings
- Greece Itinerary 10 Days — fitting Rhodes into a longer trip
- Greece Itinerary 7 Days — one-week Greece options
- How to Plan a Trip to Greece — complete planning guide
- Is Greece Expensive? — honest cost breakdown
- Best Greek Islands for History — Rhodes consistently ranks first
Written by
Athens-born engineer · Coordinates a 5-expert Greek team · 50+ years combined field experience
I write every article on this site drawing on real, first-hand expertise — mine and that of four colleagues who live and work across Greece daily: a Peloponnese tour operator, a transfer specialist across Athens, Mykonos & Santorini, a Cretan hotel owner, and a Northern Greece hotel supplier. Nothing here comes from a single visit or desk research.
Informed by 5 Greek experts
Every destination we cover has been visited and vetted by at least one team member — not for a review, but as part of their daily work in Greek tourism.