modern Bodrum
Ancient Greek city, western Anatolia .
Located in modern Turkey on a peninsula in the Aegean Sea, it became the capital of Caria (с 370 BC) under the Persian satrap Mausolus , who built a great wall, public buildings, and a secret dockyard and canal. His widow erected (с 350 BC) a great tomb (the Mausoleum) in his memory. It was one of the British Museum . Halicarnassus was the birthplace of the Greek historian Herodotus . It came under Roman rule in 129 BC, and in early Christian times was a bishopric. The ruins of the castle of the Knights of St. John, founded с AD 1400, dominate the ancient site.