Ródos

Those walls were put to the test twice in the 15th century. A Mamluk fleet besieged Rhodes in 1444 and was beaten off, and in 1480, with the Ottomans now masters of Constantinople, Mehmed II sent an army said to number 70,000 men, which was repulsed in its turn. The Grand Masters spent the next forty years rebuilding the defences against cannon, until Rhodes was among the strongest fortresses in Christendom.

In 1522 Suleiman the Magnificent came with, by one count, 100,000 men on 400 ships against some 7,000 defenders under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. Six months of bombardment and mining brought down the walls, and in December the Knights accepted terms that let them leave with their goods and promised the townspeople freedom of worship. They sailed away on 1 January 1523, later to find a new home on Malta, and under Ottoman rule the Greeks had to move out of the walled town while many of its churches became mosques.