Bodrum and the Legacy of Ancient Halicarnassus

Bodrum is like no other town in Turkey. Not only because it is one of the best spots for a summer vacation with its tiny white houses, deep blue waters and beautiful beaches and boutique hotels, but also because it carries a unique historical weight. The city is located in Southwestern Turkey, in a region that was called Caria in ancient times.

When one looks at the cityscape of Bodrum, it is easy to understand how and why it was a favoured location to establish a settlement. Many ancient authors have written about the city, then named Halicarnassus, but it is probably Vitruvius, a 1st century BC architect, who best did it justice when he described Halicarnassus as being shaped like a theatre. The city indeed is located at the bottom of a deep and large circular bay, looking southward. It occupies a gentle slope which slowly increases until the rampart of mountains encircling the whole area. The opening of the bay onto the sea is framed on each side by a spur. To the right (east), looking from the sea, stood the Zephyrion peninsula, a hill that became the site of the royal palace of Mausolus and topped by a sanctuary and temple dedicated to Apollo. On the left (west) was the hill known as Salmakis, with its fortress, eponymous spring and sanctuaries of Artemis and Hermes. The entire area was then surrounded by a circuit wall, from Salmakis to Zephyrion comprising the entire slope of the city up to the crest of the surrounding mountains to the north.

View of the grand harbour and surrounding hills from Bodrum Castle

The history of Halicarnassus/Bodrum is deeply anchored in both Greek and Anatolian traditions, a double identity long cherished by its inhabitants that made it unique among any other Greek city of the Aegean. As the 1st century BC geographer Strabo puts it, there are two remarkable things to visit at Halicarnassus: the first is the fountain of Salmakis, where the beautiful Hermaphrodite, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, was tricked by the Nymph, Salmakis, into uniting with her forever, merging their two forms into one; second was the monumental tomb of king Mausolus, the famous Mausoleum, listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. We will come back to that!

Retracing the history of the foundation of the city is a complex task, mainly because of the continuous occupation of the place from the early Bronze Age until today. As a result, archaeological remains of the earlier times of the city are pretty scarce and deeply buried under modern constructions. Nonetheless, the discovery in 1995 of an exceptional inscription in Bodrum has shed new light on the mythological creation of the city.

The inscription, lauded by modern scholars as “The Pride of Halicarnassus” is dated to the late 2nd or early 1st century BC. In 60-lines of text, written in verse, it records a discussion between an anonymous poet and the goddess Aphrodite. The poet, apparently a foreigner, asks to learn about “What is it that gives Halicarnassus such honour?” and the goddess answers in a long list of famous deeds and reveals the exceptional origins of the town. The goddess starts her story by reminding the listener that Halicarnassus is the birthplace of Zeus, and the place where he was hidden by his mother, Rhea, to escape his father’s hunger (Kronos has previously eaten all of Zeus’ siblings as soon as they were born). Aphrodite then goes on to describe the Heroic foundation of the city. The place, she says, was first visited by Bellerophon son of Poseidon and the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the days of Herakles. Following in Bellerophon’s footsteps, Athena herself brought the first Greek coloniser in, riding through the air on the mythical winged horse Pegasus. Finally, another hero, King Anthes, left his kingdom in the Argolid, in Greece, and set sail east for Asia Minor where he founded Halicarnassus.

Foundations and scattered architectural fragments at the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

Such a glorious origin could only produce glorious later generations, of whom the goddess is more than happy to provide a long list starting with the famous Herodotus himself, the father of History, a resident of Halicarnassus in the 5th century BC.

The Salmakis inscription is of course nothing more than an elegiac poem, a reinterpretation of the city’s roots, embellished, enhanced, romanticised. It nonetheless offers an allegory of the complicated birth of the city. On the one hand there’s the local native Carian community (represented by the ‘wild’ part of the Nymph) which had originally settled on the Salmakis hill. Then, on the other hand, centuries later the Greek colonisers (embodied by the visits of Bellerophon, Athena and Anthes) arrived and settled on the opposite peninsula, Zephyrion, sometime in the early 1st millennium BC. The ‘pride of Halicarnassus’ is an ode to the success of assimilation between these two opposing populations which resulted in a hybrid combination (embodied by Hermaphrodite). The father of History himself, Herodotus, was a perfect illustration of this successful mixture. His father, Lyxes, was a Carian and his mother, Dryo, was a Greek.

The text of the Salmakis inscription is fragmentary and there is no doubt that, as well as Herodotus, many other names must have appeared in the list given by Aphrodite. Let’s take Artemisia I as a likely candidate. Artemisia lived in Halicarnassus in the early 5th century BC. She was of mixed Greek-Carian ethnicity, just like Herodotus, and daughter and heir of Lygdamis I, the ruler of the city and region after the recent conquest of the Persians. When Artemisia succeeded to father, she was at the head of one of the mightiest naval forces of the Mediterranean. She used this force to expand her personal power into the nearby islands of the Dodecanese: Kos, Nisyros and Kalymnos. This kind of power didn’t go unnoticed by the Great King of Persia, Xerxes I, while he was preparing his invasion of Greece. In 480 BC, he asked her to join the expedition where she led 70 of her ships alongside the King’s other forces at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC, perhaps the largest naval battle of the ancient world. Although largely outnumbered the Greeks were victorious, but Artemisia made such an impression that Xerxes acknowledged her to have excelled above all the other officers in his fleet!

View towards the main structure of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Next in line is another important figure who must have appeared on this who’s who of famed Halicarnassus characters list. In the first quarter of the 4th century BC, a new power rose in Caria. In the early years of the century, the Great King of Persia had appointed a certain Hekatomnos, who had been dynast of Mylasa (modern Milas, a little inland from Bodrum), to be his representative in Caria, his Satrap (or governor), inaugurating a Greek/Carian/Persian Hekatomnid power in the region. When Hekatomnos passed away in 377 BC, he was succeeded by his son and first born Mausolus.

Soon after he took power, Mausolus decided to move his capital from inland Mylasa to Halikarnassos. The reasons for doing so are numerous, the location of the city on key maritime trade routes, its large well protected harbour and its wonderful naturally defended situation, being just a few of them. But Mausolus didn’t just settle in Halicarnassus. He decided to re-found it, creating a brand-new city based on the Greek model. In order to do so, he destroyed whatever was still standing from before and created a new grid-plan surrounded by powerful city walls that significantly expanded the place. In order to populate his new Capital, he forced the populations of surrounding centuries-old cities abandon their homes and move in, making Halicarnassus the largest and mightiest city of southwestern Asia Minor.

With this in mind, Mausolus also wanted Halicarnassus to reflect the power of his family. He built a fastuous palace on the Zephyrion peninsula, right under the sanctuary of Apollo, and reserved a 25,000m2 terrace for his own tomb squarely in the centre of the urban area, the famous Mausoleum. The tomb itself was planned to be the largest, the richest, the highest ever built not only in Anatolia but also in the entire Greek world.

Steps of the monumental podium of the Mausoleum

Mausolus called on the most famous Greek architects and sculptors of the Late Classical period to work on this wonder. The result was a masterpiece of architecture, sculpture and engineering. It was made of three main parts: a 32m x 38m strong podium, which carried a temple-like structure surrounded by 38 10m-high columns, covered by a pyramidal roof of 24 large steps carrying statues of lions and topped by a pedestal on which stood a quadriga (a four horse chariot) in which stood statues of Mausolus and his wife/sister Artemisia. The entire building was decorated with reliefs and adorned with countless free-standing statues, some of them colossal, and a further monumental, seated figure of Mausolus himself. The tomb became a landmark in the history of architectural achievements. It not only left a tremendous posterity in the writings of many ancient authors and travellers but also continued influencing monumental architecture down to modern times from Lenin’s tomb on Red Square in Moscow to the Shrine of remembrance in Melbourne to the Los Angeles City Hall.

The Mausoleum stood for many centuries, until it was largely destroyed probably during an earthquake in the 12th century AD. The very same earthquake must have also damaged whatever was left of the palace on the Zephyrion peninsula. The final blow to this past glory was delivered three hundred years later, in the early decades of the 15th century, when the Knights of St John decided to establish a stronghold on the mainland after securing their headquarters on the island of Rhodes. The new castle of Saint Peter was to be established over Mausolus’ old palace and built with material coming from the site of the Mausoleum itself which was then just a pile of large blocks readily usable as a quarry.

As a result, not much is left from the splendour of the Mausoleum in today’s Bodrum. Nonetheless, a century of excavation and studies of the tomb, carried out by British, Italian and Danish archaeologists since the mid-19th century have revealed an extraordinary material culture attached to the building. From this material and with the help of the descriptions of Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder (the 1st century AD naturalist and scientist), scholars were able to produce a very well-founded reconstruction of the monument. Today, visitors can enjoy visiting the site of the Mausoleum where its foundations and the plan of the funerary chamber are still visible. It has become a very bucolic place, a garden of peace in the ever-lively modern Bodrum.

Amphora discovered in the hull of the Uluburn shipwreck on display in Bodrum Castle

On the other side of the harbour, the Castle of Saint Peter is another must-see. After a long history of upheavals, it still stands proudly at the entrance of the port. Its five majestic towers, one for each tongue (language) of the Hospitaller Knights, today offer a superb repository for the very first Turkish Museum of underwater archaeology. The visitor can explore this labyrinthine fortress which now houses some of the most famous shipwrecks ever retrieved from the bottom of the Mediterranean. From the 14th century BC Bronze Age Uluburun to the 16th century AD Ottoman Yassiada, the museum offers the largest and the richest view of international trade in the Eastern regions of the wine dark sea, telling us the story of merchants who, for more than 3 millennia, have braved the waters to collect wonders from the other side of the world.

As you can see, Bodrum is one of these places where you see and sense history on every corner.

Oh, did I forget to mention the constant blue sky competing with the blue sea, the post-card like white wash of the houses, the terraces on the harbour where one can enjoy a catch-of-the-day grilled fish, the shaded streets of local vendors in the old town and a night life like nowhere else in Turkey???

You can explore Bodrum and the legacy of ancient Halicarnassus with one of our expert archaeologists on a number of our tours including Cruising to Ephesus and Cruising the Carian Coast: from Mediterranean to Aegean.

To visit Bodrum with one of our expert tour leaders, why not join one of our Cruising to Ephesus or Cruising the Carian Coast trips.