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Marmaris Museum, set inside Marmaris Castle, is offering visitors a tightly curated walk through layers of history, from the Bronze Age up to the Republic days of Türkiye, while also using the fortress courtyard and vaulted rooms as exhibition space.
Sitting on a peninsula behind Marmaris harbour, the castle stands in a dominant position facing the sea, and it now frames the museum experience through its stone walls, bastions, and inner garden.
The earliest information cited about Marmaris Castle is linked to Herodot of Halicarnassus (Bodrum), who lived between 490 B.C. and 425 B.C.
He is described as reporting that the castle was first built in the 3rd millennium B.C., while the text also notes that the site first came under Ottoman rule in 1,390 A.D.
Building on that later historical memory, 17th-century traveler Evliya Celebi is referenced as writing in his Seyahatname that the castle was built by Sultan Suleiman I during the Rhodes expedition in 1,522 A.D. and was used as a military base.
Architecturally, the castle is described as being made of ashlar and rubble set on the main rock, with four bastions at the corners and an inscription panel positioned above the main entrance.
Inside, it has seven covered rooms and an entrance section with a barrel vault ceiling that opens up into an inner garden.
From there, stairs on both the right and left sides lead up and provide access to the fortress wall. The interior, also covered by barrel vault ceilings, is used as an exhibition space, while the courtyard is set up as an open-air exhibition area. Areas beyond the exhibition rooms are used as depots and offices.
Across the exhibition halls, artifacts are arranged in chronological order, moving through the Bronze Age, Archaic Age, Classical period, Hellenistic Age, Roman and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) period, and then up to the Republic days of Türkiye.
This layout is described as guiding visitors through shifting eras without pulling them away from the castle setting itself, since the rooms and courtyard remain part of the display route.
The first room described is the Knidos Hall, which presents artifacts brought from Datca town on the Resadiye peninsula in Mugla province.
Knidos is introduced as a prominent center of the ancient Caria region.
The hall displays marble statues brought to light through Knidos excavations, along with statue heads, figurines, ornaments, amphoras, and everyday pottery.
Among the notable items, the text points to a bronze sheath believed to belong to a colossal statue and a seated priest statue.
The second exhibition space is the Burgaz-Emecik Hall, which focuses on a group of mainly limestone statuettes and baked clay figurines.
This collection is described as among the museum’s most important artifacts, having been excavated at Burgaz in Datca and at an Apollo sanctuary near Emecik in Datca, with the material dated back to the Archaic period.
The third hall, called “Marmaris and Arounds Hall,” is located where the east and south fronts of the castle meet.
It displays gold pieces, coinage, ornaments, figurines, glass objects, and everyday pottery that were bought, retrieved, and presented to the museum from Marmaris and nearby areas.
The hall is described as pointing visitors toward traces of surrounding ancient cities, including Physkos, Amos, Kastabos, Hydas, Erine, Tymnos, Bybassos and Phoenix.
One section is set aside for gold items, while another highlights coinage from the Persian, Roman, Eastern Roman, Selcuk and Ottoman eras.
A fourth hall is described as a “stone pieces” hall, displaying gravestones, ostheoteks, friezes and statue heads. In the same overall museum route, another hall is noted as being used for temporary exhibitions.
The exhibition centered on a bronze female statue found by fishermen in 2020, which the text says Turks nicknamed “Leyla.”
The exhibition theme was described as focusing on women in antiquity, and it included bronze mirrors, unguentaria (small vessels used for perfume), hairpins, dress pins, fibulae (brooches used to fasten clothing), portrait heads and an empress head.
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