Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes

In about the middle of the 19th c., the first floor collapsed completely, and very little of it survived until 1937, and the beginning of restoration work. On the first floor were various official rooms, such as the Great Council Chamber and the dining room, as well as the private quarters of the Grand Master, which were commonly known as Margaritae. During the period of Italian rule, a chapel was built to the right of the monumental marble staircase leading up to the first floor. In it was erected a bronze statue of Saint Nicholas, a copy of the work of that name by Donatello, in Bari. Floor mosaics of late Hellenistic, Roman and Early Christian times have been laid in many of the rooms on the first floor, most of them taken from buildings of Kos.