Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was the tomb of Mausolus, a ruler of Caria under Persian authority, who died in 353 BCE. Begun in his lifetime and completed by his wife and sister Artemisia II, it combined Greek architecture with local ambition. Ancient descriptions tell of a tall marble structure of about forty-five metres, with a high podium, a colonnade of Ionic columns, a stepped pyramidal roof, and a chariot group at the summit. Leading Greek sculptors, among them Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheos, are said to have carved its friezes and statues. The tomb stood for roughly 1,800 years until earthquakes brought it down, and in the early fifteenth century the Knights of St John used its stones to build Bodrum Castle, burning some of the marble for lime. In the 1850s the archaeologist Charles Newton excavated the site and shipped sculptures, including colossal statues thought to represent Mausolus and Artemisia and fragments of the frieze, to the British Museum, where they are displayed. What remains in Bodrum is the quarried foundation area and a small museum with models and finds, a modest place that invites imagination. Visitors can combine it with Bodrum Castle and its Museum of Underwater Archaeology, and see the surviving sculptures in London. The word mausoleum itself, now used for any grand tomb, is the lasting legacy.