Five Feet, Nine Inches Above Ground

Wednesday February 11, 2026

We moved from Datça to Bodrum on Tuesday, a trip of several hours so there were not a lot of photo opportunities. On the other hand, Bodrum has a castle that houses a fine museum collection of artifacts. Some of them of them come from a local archeological site. With the threat of inclement weather on the horizon, we made haste for the old part of town and the castle.

One of the features of this port city is that it has twin bays. In ancient times it was known as Halicarnassus, once the home of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a resplendent tomb built by Artemisia in honour of her dead husband Mausolus the former ruler of Caria. The tomb was constructed in 353 BCE later to be plundered by the Knights Hospitaller in 1402 to build their fortress , the present day castle. There’s a great deal more to the story of the city and the castle and that’s the reason for the museum.

The castle was constructed in tower sections each tower was built by different divisions of the Knights Hospitaller from various parts of the medieval world such as Spain, England, France and Germany. The Knights Hospitaller originated in Jerusalem, a Catholic military order known as the Order of Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in the 12th century CE. they quickly expanded into an international order with a great deal of property and influence. Bodrum was considered a strategic site until 1522 when it fell to the Ottoman Empire and the knights left for Europe.

On each of the towers walls over the doorways can be seen the coats of arms of the knights responsible for the construction. It’s a who’s who of the organization. The main stairways are wide enough with shallow enough steps to allow a fully armed knight on horseback to pass through, perhaps several at a time. It must have been a busy place filled with knights, the stable hands to care for the horses, armourers and possibly blacksmiths, and all sorts of hangers-on. Not the well ordered museum of today, such as this collection of amphorae excavated from a local shipwreck.

The chapel was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman takeover.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the museum collection is the Uluburun Shipwreck Excavation. The shipwreck site was discovered in 1982 by sponge diver Mehmet Çakir. Because of the depth of the site, it took over 11 years to excavate the shipwreck that happened in approximately 1320 BCE. It’s the world’s oldest known shipwreck. Its recreation in the museum is impressive.

Another part of the collection comes from the Pedasa archeological site outside of Bodrum.

And then there was a coin collection that included an historical overview of the history and concept of money.

And to end the tour, the disinterred skeleton of a Carian princess recreated in 3D.

The history lesson over, we headed towards the car and were sidetracked…

by dessert and Turkish tea and coffee. And that, dear readers, is the end of this particular day. Stay tuned, there will be more from Bodrum! Many thanks. Until then.