Lindos is for most visitors the most impressive archaeological site on Rhodes. The dramatic natural landscape is enhanced by the picturesque quality of the more modern town, with the Lindos Acropolis rising dominantly on a steep cliff at 116 m height like a sovereign podium overlooking the sea, framed by mighty fortress walls.

On the summit of the Lindos Acropolis are the ruins of the goddess Athena Lindia, temples from the 4th century BC As well as the Propylaea, the great Hellenistic Stoa and the Byzantine chapel of Saint John. In the time of the Knights of St. John, the castle is surrounded by sturdier fortress walls while the flowering period of Lindos extends as a naval power up to the 19th century. According to myth, the cult of Athena Lindia was pre-Hellenic, although this is not borne out by the sporadic excavation finds. The history of the sanctuary begins in the Geometric period (9th c. BC). In the Archaoc period the tyrant of Lindos, Kleoboulos, revived the cult and built a temple, probably on the site of an earlier one. The Archaic temple had the same Doric tetrastyle amphiprostyle plan as the subsequent one.