The Guns Of Navarone | 1961
A guide to the various locations on Rhodes where The Guns of Navarone was filmed, including the harbour, the monastery and the city gates.
A crack team is assembled to take out a pair of legendary giant guns on the (fictitious) Greek island of 'Navarone' in J Lee Thompson's film of Carl Foreman's adaptation of the Alistair MacLean novel.
Exteriors for the film were filmed on the island of Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese Islands of Greece. Interiors were filmed at Shepperton Studios, and storm scenes in the water tanks at Elstree Studios.
The team gathers, to be greeted by the officious Major Baker, at Kolona Harbour, just a little south of the city of Rhodes' main Mandraki Harbour, with the distinctive remains of De Naillac Tower in the background.
The view of 'Navarone' with its huge bluff where the guns are housed is the bay at the city of Lindos on the west coast of Rhodes. That imposing headland, though, is no more than a matte painting (the film won an Oscar for its special effects).
The team sets sail for 'Navarone' where they're to rendezvous with the Greek resistance at the ruins of 'St Alexis'. Amazingly the spectacular shipwreck sequence, as the boat is destroyed on rocks, was filmed in Elstree's water tanks.
While stunt doubles (climbers from the Greek army) were filmed by a second unit on location, the climbing of the sheer cliffs was filmed in the confines of Shepperton Studio with the actors crawling along the studio floor – a bit like Batman and Robin climbing up buildings in the old TV series.
'St Alexis', where the team meets up with Maria (Irene Papas) and Anna (Gia Scala) is the remains of the Temple of Athena Linda, part of Lindos Acropolis, overlooking Lindos.
The town of 'Mandrakos', where the team tries to blend in with the locals is partly Lindos itself and partly Old Town of the city of Rhodes, at the island's northern tip. A couple of shots of the restaurant terrace, where everyone joins in the folk song, were restaged on the Shepperton backlot due to bad weather – possibly the only time the weather in England was better than in Greece.
The Monastery in which the saboteurs hole up on the final day is Skiadi Monastery (Moni Skiadi), a couple of miles northwest of the village of Messanagros, down in the southern part of Rhodes. It's one of the more important monasteries on the island, famous for its icon of the Virgin Mary which, according to legend, oozed blood when it was once stabbed by a heretic.
Most of the present buildings are from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, built around the thirteenth-century Church of the Holy Cross. For the film, the whole of the interior was, of course, built at Shepperton.
When the team scopes out the entrance to the fortifications on 'Navarone' and watches the German convoy rolling over the roadway crossing the protective ditch, this is the d'Amboise Gate into the Crusader Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, on Ippoton just to the south of Mandraki Harbour.
In 1305 the Knights Hospitaller of St John, having fled Jerusalem, settled on Rhodes, which they ruled for two hundred years. They established a combined palace and fortress, which is one of the few examples of Gothic architecture in Greece, on the site of an ancient Greek temple of Helios.
in 1522 the Ottoman Turks invaded Rhodes and turned the Palace into a garrison and prison. Although damaged by earthquakes in 1the 19th century, rebuilding has restored the Palace to what we see today. It's now open to the public.
The smaller and less heavily guarded entrance where Mallory (Gregory Peck,) and Miller (David Niven) manage to gain entry after killing a couple of sentries and throwing them into the ditch, is the Palace's Saint Athanasios Gate further south.
The final inner gate where the pair, wearing Nazi uniforms, boldly drive straight in while the German troops are being distracted, is the Marine Gate, or Sea Gate, of the fortification of the old city of Rhodes, on Akti Sachtouri. In real life, the overlooks Kolona Harbour – the very place where the team had first met up.
Once through the gate, though, they are inside the grounds of the Palace of the Grand Master, and it's here the little pillbox guarding the entrance to the gun cave was built for the film.
The guns themselves, of course, were built back at the studio, along with that working elevator used to reach them. This was an extraordinarily huge set for the day – long before we'd become used to the extravagant hideouts of Bond villains.
In fact, the cave entrance with the gigantic guns had to be built outdoors on the Shepperton backlot.
Naturally, I have to mention Anthony Quinn Bay. While filming The Guns of Navarone, Quinn bought a miniature bay on the island hoping to create a centre for artists and film-makers. Unfortunately, this did not become a reality. Bogged down with legal technicalities which were never resolved, Quinn remained bitter and vowed never to visit Rhodes again. Nevertheless, the name persists to the present day.