Object description

Confronted by the now firmly established Ottoman Sultanate, the Knights Hospitaller, whose headquarters were on the island of Rhodes, needed another stronghold on the mainland. Grand Master Philibert de Naillac identified a suitable site across from the island of Kos, where a castle had already been built by the Order. Its location was the site of a fortification in Doric times as well as of a small Seljuk castle in the 11th century. The same promontory is also the probable site of the Palace of Mausolos, the famous King of Caria. In his travel diary Travels In Asia Minor, Charles Boileau Elliot describes this palace as the Palace of Mausolus with absolute certainty, and this account was written in the year 1840.