Bodrum Castle: History

Castle of Saint Peter

You will tour the castle as well. It assumed something of its present shape beginning in 1402, when the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes built it where King Mausolus (377-353 BCE) may once have had his palace, and where later armies, including the Hospitallers, had built smaller fortresses.

But in 1402 it was enlarged and strengthened, in part using stone pillaged from the nearby Mausoleum. Each of the order’s luingistic/national groups had its own tower: French, German, English, Italian. By 1406 the chapel was done, the English Tower by 1413, and by 1437 the mighty walls.

After Constantinople fell to the armies of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453, the castle was attacked by the sultan’s armies, but withstood them, as it did again in 1480. But in the 1500s, strengthening with more stones from the Mausoleum was insufficient to guarantee it against the mighty forces of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. In 1522 the castle fell, the knights departed, and the sultan’s standard flew on the English Tower.

The castle actually gave Bodrum its modern name: it was known as Petronium (“Peter’s”), which became Bodrum (cellar, dungeon) in Turkish.