Ro or Rho () is a small

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, more precisely in the

Levantine Sea The Levantine Sea () is the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea. Geography The Levantine Sea is bordered by Turkey in the north and north-east corner, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine in the east, Egypt in the south, and the Aegean ...

, near

Kastellorizo Kastellorizo or Castellorizo ( ; ), officially Megisti (), is a Greek island and municipality of the Dodecanese in the Eastern Mediterranean.Bertarelli, 131 It lies roughly off the south coast of Turkey, about southeast of Athens and east of R ...

, close to

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

n coast. It is part of the municipality of Megísti (Kastellorizo) in the

South Aegean region The South Aegean (, ) is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Greece. It consists of the Cyclades and Dodecanese island groups in the central and southeastern Aegean Sea. Administration The South Aegean region was established in the ...

Description

Together with other islets in the surrounding region, Ro was the object of a sovereignty dispute in the 1920s between Turkey and

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, which at the time was in possession of Kastellorizo and the Dodecanese islands. A 1932 treaty assigned Ro to the Kingdom of Italy. It came under Greek sovereignty in 1947, together with the other former Italian possessions in the Aegean. The islet is named ''Kara Ada'' ("Black Island") in

Turkish Turkish may refer to: * Something related to Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities in the former Ottoman Empire * The w ...

History

Anciently, the island was known as Rhoge (). An inhabitant of the island was called Rogaeus (). Ancient fortifications show that during the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

and later, there was a small garrison post on the island. The three towers of

, Ro and Strongyli comprise the main links in a dense network of watchtowers constructed by the citizens of

Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...

during the Hellenistic period, to control the sea routes and the coast. Ro has been uninhabited for most of its modern history, except for the one Greek woman, with her husband and her mother, who made it famous,

Despina Achladioti Despina may refer to: People * Despina Achladiotou, the Lady of Ro (c1890–1982), Greek patriot * Despina Chatzivassiliou-Tsovilis (born 1967), Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) * Despina Delios, A ...

. Every day, Achladioti, also known as the

Lady of Ro ''Lady'' is a term for a woman who behaves in a polite way. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the female counterpart of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men. "Lady" is a ...

, raised a Greek flag over the island, until her death in 1982. A Greek

border outpost A border outpost, border out post, border observation post or BOP List of islands of Greece Greece has many islands, with estimates ranging from somewhere around 1,200 to 6,000, depending on the minimum size to take into account. The number of inhabited islands is variously cited as between 166 and 227. The largest Greek island by ...

Italian Islands of the Aegean The Italian Islands of the Aegean (; ; ) were an archipelago of fourteen islands (the Dodecanese, except Kastellorizo) in the southeastern Aegean Sea, that—together with the surrounding islets—were ruled by the Kingdom of Italy from 1912 t ...

References

* Kalliopi Bairami, "Ro" in: Andreas Vlachopoulos (ed.), ''Archaiologia: Nisia tou Aigaiou'', Melissa 2005, p. 375.

External links

Official website of Municipality of Megisti
{{Authority control Kastellorizo