"Bodrum..Bodrum" Bodrum by marsistanbul

Less than a generation ago Bodrum was a small,sleepy fishing village.Few people knew of its glorious past or could imagine its immediate future,the resort of today.
Today's visitor is able to explore and enjoy the city much more when aware of its long and interesting history.
From recent excavations we know that there was human habitation on the Bodrum peninsula in the Chalcolithic Age,some 3000-5000 B.C.
There were also settlements belonging to the Mycenean culture,their existence confirmed by numerous excavated gravesites..
From vestiges of the past we know that Lelegians and Carians,the first natives to be identified by name,lived in this area during the Trojan Wars ca.1100 B.C.
Indeed,Homer's epic poem,the Illiad,tells us that the Carians were the allies of the Trojans in defending the Anatolian homeland from the invading Greeks.Later Dorian colonist arrived and initially settled on a small island they named Zephyria,the place which later was joined by a causeway to the mainland on which today the castle stands.They gradually mixed with the local population and founded the great city of Halicarnassus which,for a brief span,was a member of an allience of six nearby Aegean city-states known as the Dorian Hexapolis..

my first visit to Bodrum july&august 1975

On of the city's famous native sons was Herodotus,revered by Classical scholars as the "Father of History",and it was he who wrote at great length about the exploits Artemisia,ruler of Caria,who fought with the Persian king Xerxes against the Greeks.Her wise counsel and counsel and courage in battle,however,did not prevent the loss of the battle of Salamis Bay.Perhaps the most famous rulers of Halicarnassus were Mausolus and his sister/wife Artemisia II,who commissioned the Mausoleum,the great tomb of Mausolus.The city's days in the sun ended with its conquest by the troops of Alexander the Great of Macedon in 334 B.C.and it never recovered its former glory.During Roman and Byzantine times it was a provincial backwater,but we know by remains of a rich Roman's villa and of East Roman churches that it was inhabited.

Bodrum 1975

Bodrum appears next in history under another name,Castri Sancti Petri,also Mesy.In about 1402 A.D. the Knights of St.John,then headquartered on Rhodes,built the castle that,restored,still stands today.
They occupied it for some 120 years until,in 1523 A.D.it was surrendered to the Ottoman Turks of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent after his conquest of Rhodes.Once again on the fringes of empire,Bodrum slumbered until the discovery of its enchanting beauty and its rich heritage,first by a group of Turkish intellectuals and eventually by waves of overseas visitors who appreciate all of its various aspects.So much so,that they come again and again...and again.