Rodi & Dodecanese
The Dodecanese Islands are a set of islands south west of Greece, north east of Crete and near the coast of Turkey. The name means twelve islands in Greek. It’s called that because there are twelve main islands, although there are many more in the group. The biggest island is Rhodes (i.e., Rodi in Italian).
Italy took control of the islands during the Italo-Turkish War in 1912. They were part of the Kingdom of Italy until after World War II. They were given to Greece under the Treaty of Paris in 1947 – although Turkey wanted them.
The album pages for this sub-section of the Aegean Islands are stamps issued for use in the Dodecanese Islands while under the control of the Kingdom of Italy. There were three stamps issued before that time, but I decided not to include them since they weren’t Italian stamps – they’re not part of the focus of my collection.
Stamps depicting King Vittorio Emanuelle III and two sets of commemoratives used in Italy, which were overprinted with the name of each island, were used on their respective island. Afterwards – I may be wrong about this – stamps for the Aegean Islands (Isole Dell’Egeo in Italian) were used by all of the islands in this area, not just the Dodecanese Islands, without distinction of which island (i.e., no overprint of a particular island name). However, some stamps were printed and designed specifically for the Aegean islands and had the name Rodi (i.e., Rhodes) on them – not overprinted.
Note
The pages that follow show a few album pages for Rhodes and single pages for each of the other Dodecanese Islands. Those pages are a little dull in that they’re the same stamps on each page, with the only difference being the name of the island overprinted on them. So when I designed the album pages, I put the definitives on one album page and squeezed the commemoratives into another for each island – except for Rodi. Since there are only two fairly identical album pages for each island, I’ve posted both album pages on one web page for each Dodecanese island.
It’s taken almost two years, but I now have all of the stamps in this sub-album. I was missing for months just one, a stamp for the island of Simi. I had been looking for it, but couldn’t find it until recently. It was a little expensive, but I so wanted to finish that page and this album. So I bought it. It’s nice to be done with an album.
Contains 0 spots: own 0 – 0 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Apr 6, 2024