Italian colonists in the Dodecanese period, and destroyed all other Ottoman buildings that weren't of importance. Furthermore, in those years an "Institute for the study of the History and Culture of the Dodecanese region" was established, and major infrastructure work was done to modernize Rhodes. Buildings like the Aquarium were built, mainly in art deco style. Indeed, in all the Dodecanese islands remains a huge architectural legacy from the Italian colonists. Here are some examples: Italian colonists in the Dodecanese Italian colonists were settled in the Dodecanese Islands of the Aegean Sea in the 1930s by the Fascist Italian government of Benito Mussolini, Italy having
Dodecanese civilian governor, Count , as "Viceroy of the Dodecanese". As the name was associated with Greek irredentism, from 1924 Mussolini's Fascist regime tried to abolish its use by referring to them as the "Italian Islands of the Aegean", but this name never acquired any wider currency outside Italian administrative usage. The islands joined Greece in 1947 following as the "Governorate-General of the Dodecanese" (Γενική Διοίκησις Δωδεκανήσου), since 1955 the "Dodecanese Prefecture" (Νομός Δωδεκανήσου). The Dodecanese have been inhabited since prehistoric times. In the Neopalatial period on Crete, the islands were heavily Minoanized (contact beginning in the second millennium BC). Following