Town info Town map Sightseeing Ancient Halicarnassus

During the Trojan War, some Dorian colonists settled in Halicarnassus in 1200b.c and intermarried the local Karian population. Herodotus suggests that Karians were once called Lelegs and lived under the dominion of the Creten king Minos to whom they provided some of their best warriors.
At that time, Halicarnassus was one of the three mainland cities of Dorian Hexapolis and adjoined one of the independent cities of Myndos on the west and Theangela on the east.

After the Persian conquest in 546b.c., Halicarnassus was ruled by a Karian dynasty centered at Mylasa. In 480b.c. Queen Artemisia I of Karian and Greek descent, personally led her forces on the side of Persians at the battle of Salamis. Halicarnassus became a member of Delian League as a result of the Persian defeat. She again came under Persian control after the king's peace of 386b.c. and became of real importance during the period of a Persian satrap Moussollos.

As noted by Strabo; when Karian king Hekatomnos died at 377 b.c., his oldest son Moussollos was crowned. He became the real Karian king as a result of his victories in major wars. He has moved the capital of Karia from Mylasa to Halicarnassus and constructed the 7kms long city walls to protect his
new capital.

Admiring the Ionistic culture, he invited famous architects and sculptors to ornament the Karian sites.
At that time, Halicarnassus was a well fortified city arranged in an ampitheater form around her natural harbor and was laid out on a grid with a major street leading north from the harbor to the heights of Acropolis. (On the summit of the Acropolis was a shrine of Ares with a colossal statue, on the right horn by The Fountain of Salmakis.) The palace of Moussollos was located on the peninsula to the east of the harbor called Zephyria near the site of an early classical Temple of Apollo. From Moussollo's Palace, it was possible to see the agora, harbor, wall circuit, while below it -hiding under the hills was a secret harbor from which the king could issue commands from the palace without anyone being aware of him. After Moussollos' death in 353b.c., his wife who was also his sister, Queen Artemisia II, was crowned and upon her husband's death she constructed the 49m high monumental tomb "Mausoleum" at the center of the city which is a magnificent piece of art in the Hellenistic world and one of the Seven Wonders of the antique era.

In 334 b.c. Alexander The Great invaded Halikarnassus and appointed Ada, an exiled member of the ruling Karian Dynasty, as the new queen. The city became a part of the Roman Empire in 133b.c., independent but not exceptionally prosperous. She suffered under Verres in 80b.c., and again under Brutus and Cassius in 40b.c. and then became a part of Byzantium and subsequently the Seljuk Empire later on.
In 1405 she was captured by the Knights of St. John of Rhodes and a medieval castle was built on Zephyria in the name of St. Peter. During the Ottoman period (1522) the castle was used as a prison.

After secular Turkish Republic founded by M. Kemal Atatürk in 1923, Bodrum became a lovely holiday and entertainment center. Now the castle hosts one of the most important Museum of Underwater Archeology in the world.