We continue our tour around the historic and very well preserved Bodrum Castle.
The different nationalities within the Knights of St John, or the Crusaders as they are more commonly known, each built a tower inside the Castle, funded by contributions from people in their respective countries.
Above is the entrance to the English Tower with coats of arms arrayed across it.
In total there are almost 250 coats of arms still visible in the Castle.
The other towers are French, Italian, German and one shared between the French and Catalans.
The Knights also built a chapel within the Castle walls which the Turks, taking possession of the Castle in 1522, converted into a mosque.
The chapel/mosque is now one of many exhibition halls serving the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, housed within the Castle. We’ll tell you more about that next time.
But before we leave the Castle this time, here’s a tasty bit of trivia. Evelyn Lyle Kalcas, who wrote a guide book to the Castle entitled ‘Bodrum Castle and its Knights’, now long out of print, points out that all the English knights mentioned in the King’s address to the Earl of Westmoreland before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, are represented by their arms in Bodrum Castle:
“Then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words,
Henry the King, Bedford and Exeter
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloster,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.”