Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus stood in the ancient city of Halicarnassus, now Bodrum, on the south west coast of Turkey. It was built as the tomb of Mausolus, the ruler of Caria under the Persian Empire, and of his wife and sister Artemisia II. The word mausoleum, used for any grand tomb, comes from his name.

Work began around the time of Mausolus's death in 353 BC and was continued by Artemisia. The architects Satyros and Pytheos designed it, and four of the leading Greek sculptors of the day, Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheus, each decorated one side. The tomb rose about 45 metres high, with a stone base, a colonnade and a stepped pyramid roof topped by a four-horse chariot. Ancient writers listed it among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The monument stood for more than 1,600 years before earthquakes brought it down. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the Knights of St John used its stones to strengthen their Castle of St Peter on the harbour, and some carved blocks can still be seen in the castle walls. In the 1850s the British archaeologist Charles Newton excavated the site, and many statues and frieze panels went to the British Museum in London.

The site today is an open-air museum in a residential street of Bodrum. Visitors see the foundation cut into the rock, scattered column drums and architectural pieces, the original drainage channels and a small gallery with models and copies of the frieze.

It can be seen in under an hour and is a short walk from the harbour and the castle. Ticket and hour details are set by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The foundations were cut into the rock to a depth of about 2.4 to 2.7 metres over an area of roughly 33 by 39 metres, and that rock cut is the main thing visitors see today. Pliny the Elder described a rectangular building with a perimeter of about 125 metres, surrounded by a colonnade of 36 columns, with a pyramid roof rising in 24 steps to a total height of about 43 metres.

Sculpture covered the tomb. A stairway flanked by stone lions led up to the platform, and excavators have found about 20 lion statues somewhat larger than life. Stone horsemen guarded the corners, and the four-horse chariot on the summit carried figures of Mausolus and Artemisia. The frieze of Greeks fighting Amazons is among the surviving pieces, most of them now in the British Museum.

Danish researchers led by Kristian Jeppesen of Aarhus University studied the site from 1966 to 1977 and published their results in six volumes. To picture the original, visit the Gümüşkesen at Milas, inland from Bodrum, a small second-century tomb that copies its design. In Bodrum itself, pair the site with the Castle of St Peter and its Museum of Underwater Archaeology, where some of the Mausoleum's stones are built into the walls.