The Bodrum Castle

Photo by Can Sarica.

The Bodrum Castle is part of the Tentative list of Turkiye in order to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List. It is a proposed extension of WHS.

The Bodrum Castle was built by the Order of the Knights Hospitaller in the 15th century. They occupied this mainland position – in addition to their headquarters on the island of Rhodes - for 120 years. It has four towers in different styles, known as the English, French, German, and Italian towers, bearing the names of the nations responsible for their construction. It now houses the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology.

Map of The Bodrum Castle

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The coordinates shown for all tentative sites were produced as a community effort. They are not official and may change on inscription.

Community Reviews

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Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 25-Jan-22 -

The Bodrum Castle (T) by Zoë Sheng

THE Bodrum Castle is a poor excuse to inscribe something in this faux Mykonos. While not a bad place to visit I don't think seeing the castle, more of a fort really, is worth it especially at this horrendous price. I believe they try to justify the entrance ticket price as they pad the fort with all sort of other museums, things like underwater archeology research, which are surely seen much better elsewhere and explained better. Besides, I didn't want to come and visit for that.

You can see the fort in like 20 minutes and it's mainly walls now. There are a couple of mosaics and some interesting towers but that's about it. The mosque doesn't fit into the castle and surely wasn't there when it was first built by crusaders.

The only highlight I see is that it contains building blocks of the Maussolleion which means I have now been to 5 of the original sites, 6 if you count just visiting Rhodes and of course it's spectical if those blocks in Alexandria you can see diving are really the original Pharos. Seeing that Babylon was just a mythical site that concludes my Wonders travels which I hadn't even planned on in the first place.

I understand that the castle has a lot of history but I don't think that's enough for it to be inscribed. There are plenty of better examples of crusader castles and nowadays where comparison studies are done it will show that Bodrum isn't special enough.


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