Marmaris Castle and Archeology Museum

This guide to Marmaris Castle in Muğla opens in 1522, when Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent needed a forward base for his invasion of Rhodes and stonemasons raced to build straight from the bedrock, closing the walls with vaults instead of timber a war fleet could not spare. It traces the fortress through centuries of soldiers and, later, eighteen ordinary families who lived inside its barrel-vaulted rooms until the last residents moved out in 1979 so restorers could get in. Look at the entrance now, at the one carved inscription the builders had time for.