Knidos

At the very tip of the Datça Peninsula, where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean, the ruins of Knidos spread across a steep, wind-scoured headland above two ancient harbours. It was one of the wealthiest Greek cities of Caria, famous throughout antiquity for a single marble statue and remembered today for the terraces, moles and theatre seats that still step down towards the water. Much of the site remains unexcavated, but enough stands above ground for the shape of the ancient city to be readable even from the deck of a boat lying at anchor in its southern port.

Dorian Origins and a Move to the Cape

Knidos was a Dorian foundation, established by Greek settlers at a site further east along the peninsula near modern Datça, at a place now known as Burgaz, probably around the 8th century BC. It belonged to the Dorian Hexapolis, a federation of six cities of shared Dorian descent that also took in Halicarnassus, Kos and the three Rhodian cities of Lindos, Kamiros and Ialysos. The members met on Knidian territory to celebrate the Dorian games, held every four years at the Triopian sanctuary. In the later 4th century BC the city shifted west to the position it is best known for today, at the site now called Tekir, facing the island of Triopion across a narrow strait.

Herodotus preserves one of the stranger episodes in the city's history. As the Persian general Harpagus swept through Caria in the mid-6th century BC, the Knidians began cutting a canal through the narrow isthmus behind their territory, intending to turn their land into an island and make it defensible. Workmen were injured by flying stone splinters in unusual numbers, and when the city consulted the oracle at Delphi it was told that Zeus would have made the land an island had he wished it so. The Knidians abandoned the trench and surrendered without a fight. Two centuries later the sea off the city gave its name to the Battle of Cnidus in 394 BC, in which the Athenian commander Conon, then in Persian service, destroyed the Spartan fleet.

Two Harbours, Terraces and Theatres

The city's defining feature is its double harbour. A causeway, originally built as a pair of substantial moles, joined the mainland to the island of Triopion and created a large commercial port on the southern side of the isthmus and a smaller, sheltered naval basin on the north, the latter reckoned capable of berthing around 20 triremes. Long stretches of the moles survive in good condition, and the southern basin still functions as an anchorage.

Behind the harbours the city was laid out on an orthogonal, Hippodamian grid, with seven stepped north-south streets crossing four main east-west avenues and climbing the slope in a series of broad terraces. A circuit of walls with both rounded and angular towers enclosed the whole, the best-preserved stretches dating from the 4th century BC. Two theatres were cut into the hillside; the lower one, above the commercial harbour, seated roughly 5,000 people. Scattered across the terraces are an agora, a large Doric stoa, a Corinthian temple of the Roman imperial period, a sanctuary of Demeter, a temple of Apollo with its altar, a stadium outside the western wall and a necropolis that runs for kilometres east along the approach to the site.

The Aphrodite of Knidos

The city's ancient celebrity rested on a statue. In the middle of the 4th century BC the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles carved two figures of Aphrodite, one draped and one nude; according to Pliny the Elder, the people of Kos took the clothed version and the Knidians bought the naked one. It is generally regarded as the first life-size female nude in Greek sculpture, and it turned the city into a destination in its own right, with visitors sailing there simply to see it. Pliny describes it as standing in a small shrine open on all sides, so that the figure could be admired from every angle. King Nicomedes of Bithynia is said to have offered to cancel the city's entire public debt in exchange for it. Knidos refused.

The original was taken to Constantinople in late antiquity and is thought to have been destroyed there, most likely in the fire that consumed the Palace of Lausos in the later 5th century AD. Roughly 192 Roman copies and variants are known, of which the Colonna Venus in the Vatican Museums is considered the most faithful. Excavations directed by Iris Love between 1969 and 1972 uncovered the foundations of a circular temple on one of the upper terraces, widely identified as the shrine that housed the statue. The attribution is still argued over, but the round platform and its marble base remain among the most visited points on the headland.

Excavation and What Stands Today

Systematic archaeology at Knidos began with Charles Newton, who dug here in 1857 and 1858 for the British Museum. His team recovered the seated Demeter of Knidos from a temple enclosure, and in 1858 his colleague Richard Pullan spotted the Lion of Knidos on the cliffs east of the city: a six-tonne animal cut from a single block of Pentelic marble, 2.89 metres long and 1.82 metres high, which had once crowned a tomb monument positioned to be seen from passing ships and long thought to commemorate the naval victory of 394 BC. Both sculptures went to London, and since 2000 the lion has stood beneath the roof of the Great Court. Later campaigns on the terraces have uncovered five Byzantine churches, one with an opus sectile floor, along with a Hellenistic sundial.

Knidos produced scholars out of all proportion to its size. The astronomer and mathematician Eudoxus came from the city, as did Ctesias, physician at the Persian court and author of accounts of Persia and India, and Sostratus, credited with building the Pharos lighthouse at Alexandria. The city also supported a school of medicine that rivalled the one on Kos, though neither the school nor Eudoxus's observatory has ever been located on the ground. The site is open to visitors, with a small museum building beside the ruins, and its double harbour fills with boats through the summer, which is why it remains a popular stop for gulet charter guests exploring Turkey, anchoring much as ancient sailors once did.