Halicarnassus

This is a place that has been knocked about a bit. Halicarnassus was founded by the Dorians early in the first millenium BC. The Hexapolis, a league of six cities, originally included Halicarnassus but it was expelled for general uncoolness or something similar. The Persians managed the place with the help of native Carian dynasts including the the formidable Artemisia the elder who, while commanding a ship at the battle of Salamis in 480 BC, impressed Xerxes with her naval prowess.The Persians dropped out of the picture for a while after their defeat but in 386 BC they were back. Their second satrap in Halicarnassus, Hecatomnus, founded a dynasty that held the reins for 50 years and imported Greek craftsmen and thinkers. The Hecatomids included in their number one Mausolos who did so well for himself, building palaces and things like that, that when he died his grateful poulace erected a monument in his name, a mausoleum.After a bit of a struggle the city fell to Alexander (what didn't?) in about 334 and things were fairly calm for a few years but then the whole region went to hell in a handbasket when Alexander died.The Roman Empire calmed things down again and under the Byzantines things were fairly relaxed until the 11th Century when the Turks arrived for the first of several periods of occupation that would mirror the decline of the fortunes of Byzantium. Suleyman the magnificent captured the city from the hands of the Knights Hospitalier who constructed the Castle of St. Peter, partly using stone ramsacked from the Mausoleum.In the 18th Century Catherine the Great's fleet attacked from the sea in an attempt to support a Greek rebellion. The French tried to land an expeditionary force during the first World War and Italians ocpied the town in 1919. Ataturks Republican forces expelled them and things have been increasingly Turkish ever since.