Bodrum Castle, photo by G. Ozcan via Flickr
When King Mausolus died, his wife and sister, Artemisia, directed her inconsolable grief into building a tomb so splendid that it became permanently imprinted on language itself — the mausoleum. Erected on a hill overlooking the Aegean city of Halicarnassus, the structure employed the best architects and artists of its day, all drawn from the reaches of the Hellenic World. A staircase, flanked by stone lions, led to the tomb, guarded by mounted stone warriors on each corner. Rising dramatically to the sky, the white marble centerpiece tapered to a roof crowned with a chariot ridden by the king and queen.
From the ramparts of Bodrum Castle, photo by Mike Dunphy
For 17 centuries the stones stood until earthquakes shattered their heavenly throne, collapsing the tomb into a heap of rubble. To the crusading Knights Hospitallers in 1402, the remains offered the perfect solution to tightening their grip on the town and region. Moving the blocks to the harbor, they invested them in the fortifications, building the Castle of St. Peter that stands today in the city now called Bodrum.
Construction employed the best techniques of the day, including twisting and turning passages with no protection against arrows, stones, or heated projectiles. The knights themselves, gathered from several countries, each took one of the five towers and its adjacent section, imbuing them with their own character — German, English, French, Italian and Spanish. Following the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, however, its days were numbered and walls finally breached by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1522.
Inside Bodrum Castle, photo by Mike Dunphy
Today the castle stands as one of the premier tourist attractions in Aegean Turkey, a key part of any Bodrum shore exhibition and city highlights tour. Summer sees it occasionally turn it into a mob scene as travelers disembark from docking cruise ships in summer, backpackers arrive by bus, and Turks by car. From the ticket booth (25-lira fee), they pass through the gate and up a stone incline worn smooth by centuries of horse traffic. At the top, the central courtyard opens up, revealing a diced up collection of ancient archeology with all manner of script and relief sticking from the ground like tombstones or leaning against walls among the trees. From there, each section of the castle extends outward, so it’s simply a matter of choosing a direction.
Inside Bodrum Castle, photo by Mike Dunphy
Visiting each of the towers and walking the walls is actually a heck of a workout and exceptionally sweaty on a hot day. Nonetheless, it’s well worth the effort, especially in the individual towers, which are often preserved with enough courtly authenticity enough to give a sense of life in those days, further helped by the nearly 250 coats of arms of the knights that served there on the walls. Two other towers are visible too, one of which, the Gatineau Tower, constructed by castle commander Jacques Gatineau (1512-1514) served a more brutal role as a dungeon and torture chamber.
The highlight for many (and welcome source of air conditioning) is the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Housing material collected from the sands and shipwrecks of the Aegean sea, the museum paints an exotic picture of the ancient and middle ages, the highlights being a 52-by-16-foot ship that sank in 1025 with three tons of glass; artifacts from the world’s only fully excavated Classical Greek shipwreck (dating from 480 B.C. to 400 B.C.); and a collection of jewelry said to belong to Queen Ada of Halica, which includes a gold crown, necklace, bracelets, rings and a wreath of gold myrtle leaves.
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