Bodrum, Turkey: Crusader Castle, Ancient Mausoleum, and the Aegean Peninsula

The Castle of St. Peter (Bodrum Castle), built by the Knights of St. John between 1404 and 1523 using stones quarried from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, rises on a headland that divides Bodrum's two harbors and holds the Museum of Underwater Archaeology — widely considered the best museum of its kind in the world. The collection spans Bronze Age shipwrecks, Byzantine cargo vessels, Hellenistic glass, and Uluburun, the oldest shipwreck ever excavated in detail (13th century BCE), whose cargo of copper ingots, ebony, tin, and Canaanite amphorae is among the most significant archaeological finds of the twentieth century. The museum occupies multiple towers and rooms within the castle; the Uluburun exhibit alone warrants an hour. The views from the castle battlements over both harbors are the finest in the city.

The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus — the tomb built for Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria who died in 353 BCE — was one of the largest monuments of antiquity, reaching 45 metres in height with 36 columns and sculptural friezes that were considered among the finest Greek carving of the era. The site today is a sunken ruin with exposed foundations, a small museum of surviving fragments, and a reproduction drawing of the original structure. The Knights of St. John dismantled most of the building to construct the castle, and much of the surviving sculpture went to the British Museum in the nineteenth century. What remains at the site rewards twenty minutes of close attention.

The Bodrum Peninsula extends west and south from the town, and the villages strung along its coastline are among the most pleasant day trips from the port. Gümüşlük, 18 kilometres west, occupies the ancient site of Myndos on a sheltered bay, with the ruins of the Hellenistic city wall visible just offshore; the waterfront fish restaurants serve locally caught seabream and seabass at tables set over the water at low tide. Yalıkavak, on the peninsula's northwestern tip, has grown from a fishing village into a marina development with a strong concentration of seafood restaurants and the Palmarina for yacht traffic. Türkbükü, on the north coast, is the most fashionable of the peninsula villages and least traditionally oriented — boutique hotels, a crowded beach club strip, and the highest prices on the peninsula.

The Bodrum market occupies the streets behind the castle most mornings and sells the produce of the surrounding plain — fresh figs, dried herbs, olive oil, local honey from the maquis-covered hillsides — alongside the hand-made sandals, ceramics, and textiles that are Bodrum's main craft tradition. The old bazaar lanes between the market and the harbor have jewelry and carpet shops running alongside ordinary hardware and food stores, a mix that keeps the quarter functioning as a real market rather than a purely tourist circuit. Gulet (wooden motor-sailing vessels) tours of the peninsula and its offshore islands are bookable from the harbor and range from half-day trips to the nearby bays to full-day circuits of the southern coastline; the gulet is the most efficient way to reach the better anchorages and the blue lagoon at Bozburun.