Herodotos, the father of history, was born at Halikarnassos — the old name of Bodrum — in 484 BC, and on his account the town was founded by the Dorians. The Carians and the Leleges settled here afterwards. In 650 BC people from Megara arrived, enlarged the town and changed its name to Halikarnassos.
Persia took Bodrum in 386 BC, and the city's most brilliant period came in 353 BC when it became the capital of Caria. The Mausoleum, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, belongs to that moment: it was raised in memory of king Mausolos by Artemisia, who was both his sister and his wife.
Rome took the city in 192 BC, but it did not develop much under Roman rule. It passed to Byzantium in AD 395 and to the Turks in the 11th century, returned to Byzantium during the First Crusade and became Turkish again in the 14th.
The last two changes of hand shaped what visitors see today. The Knights of Rhodes took the town in 1415 and built the castle of St Peter on the headland; in 1522, under Süleyman the Magnificent, it was joined to the Ottoman empire again. The name Bodrum dates from the Republic. The castle and its underwater archaeology museum, the Mausoleum site, the ancient theatre and the coves of the peninsula each have their own page below.
