Mausoleums

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

In 353 BC, the great and tyrannical King Mausolus passed away. For more than twenty years, Mausolus ruled over the Greek state of Caria, which is a costal region along the Aegean Sea now occupied by Turkey. Mausolus’s wife Artemisia planned a splendid funeral and ordered a great burial site to be erected in his honor. However, not any burial plot would please the queen. She desired an architectural marvel unlike anything that the world had ever seen. Indeed, only the great Egyptian pyramids would rival the tomb’s grandeur. Within a mere three years, Caria’s best architects would create a mausoleum at the capital city Halicarnassus. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world was born.