THE CHAPEL

The beautiful building in Gothic style immeddiately on the right of the courtyard was the chapel of the Knights.

One of the first buildings to be completed during the construction of the castle between 1402 and 1437, it was restored by the Spanish knights, in 1519.The chapel, in its planning, ornaments and heavily decorated facade, shows Spanish in fluences. The chapel used to be entered through a main door in the middle and two smaller ones flanking it, with an arched window immediately above them. Due to the construction technique and plant ornaments, two windows above the main door are beatiful examples of Gothic architecture.

The chapel was totally built with material obtained from ancient Hellenistic constructions.The green stones used in the building of the side wall were brought from the Maussolleion. On the corner stones of facade are inscribed the names of the Spanish knights who helped in the restoration, between the dates of 1519-1520. After the conquest of the castle and the region by the Turks, following Ottoman tradition, the chapel was converted into a mosque with the addition of a minaret.The Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, visiting Bodrum in 1671 writes that the mosque was called Suleymaniye Camii.The wooden decorations inside the chapel were burnt and the minaret wrecked during the French shelling of 1915.The first ring stone of the minaret can be seen on the upper right corner of the facade. The Byzantine shipwreck dated to the VII. Century A.D. will be displayed at a 1/1 scale in the chapel.