Wonders of the World: The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus was a prosperous port city on Turkey's western coast. Founded in acient times by the Greeks, it grew to be a wealthy city and was eventually capured by the expanding Achaemenid Persian Empire. Its famous tomb was built between 353 and 350 BC for a satrap(a provincial governor) of the Persian Empire named Mausolus. The rectangular base of the structure measured aproxamatly 125 around the parimeter. Upon that sat a parimiter of 36 columns and a 24 stepped pyramid a top that. The whole building was constucted of white marble and decorated by numerous statues and sculptures. At the very top, 45 meters up, stood a staue depicting Mausolus and his wife Artemisia riding in a four horse chariot(called a quadriga). Only 26 years after its consruction, the city of Halicarnassus fell to Alexander the Great, but the Mausoleum would remain standing until it was brought down by an earthquake between the 12th and the 15th century. Though very little remains of the tomb, only the court yard where it once stood, a couple museum exhibits worth of sculpure and a few marble blocks that can be still seen reinforcing the walls of a crusader fortress that still stands in the harbor of the city.