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Bodrum

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Bodrum marina

Bodrum (in Greek, Αλικαρνασσός, formerly Budrum, previously Petronium, originally Halicarnassus) is a Turkish port in Muğla Province. It is on the Bodrum Peninsula, near the northwest entrance to the Gulf of Gökova, and faces the Greek island of Kos. Today, it is a center of tourism and yachting. It is the ancient Halicarnassus of Caria, renowned for the Mausoleum.

The town is very popular tourist resort for northern Europeans due to its attractive coastline and active night-life (Bodrum has been humorously referred to as the "Bedroom of Europe"). It can safely be said that every year at least a few hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Bodrum. The current population is 32,227 (2000 census). In the town there is also a football team called Bodrumspor founded in 1931.

[edit] History

A fishing village until the early 1970s, Bodrum is built on the ruins of ancient Halicarnassus. It is now Turkey’s liveliest resort, attracting poets, singers, artists and package tourists. Its perfect harbour was colonized by ancient Greeks in the 11th century BC and the city later flourished under Persian rule. It was nominally the capital city of the satrapy of Caria; its location ensured the city enjoyed considerable autonomy.

A street from Bodrum's central coast

It was here that the historian Herodotus (484–420 BC) was born, but Halicarnassus’s greatest glory was under Mausolus, who ruled on behalf of the Persians from 377 to 353 BC. When he died in 353 BC, his wife, Artemisia II of Caria, employed the ancient Greek architects Satyros and Pithios, and the sculptor Scopas to build a monument, a tomb to him. His tomb is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and was so well-known that it gave us the word “mausoleum”. Originally a temple-like structure decorated with reliefs and statuary on a massive base, only the foundations and a few pieces of sculpture now remain. After the brief tenure of the Knights of St John, who founded the Castle of St Peter in 1404, the city sank into obscurity. The castle and its town became known as Petronium, whence the modern name derives. Suleiman the Magnificent conquered Petronium for the Ottomans in 1522. Today, the sheltered anchorage is busy with luxury yachts and locally-built gulets used by seafaring holidaymakers.