Knidos
An ancient Dorian city at the western tip of the Datça peninsula, with two harbours and a round temple.
The Turkish name
Knidos
At a glance
- Province
- Muğla, Datça
- Location
- Tekir Burnu, tip of the Datça peninsula
- Harbours
- Two, north and south of the isthmus
Read more
This page was written from these sources.
- Knidos ↗Wikipedia · Checked 2026-09-23
The story
Knidos was a Greek city of Caria and a member of the Dorian Hexapolis, a league of six Dorian cities. By the 4th century BC it had moved to Tekir Burnu, the western tip of the Datça peninsula, where it was built partly on the mainland and partly on a former island now joined to the shore.
That join created two harbours: a smaller military one to the north and a larger commercial one to the south. Above them stood the round temple of Aphrodite, about 17 metres across. The goddess's statue stood at its centre; today only its base can be seen.
The astronomer Eudoxus lived here, and so did Sostratos, the architect of the lighthouse of Alexandria. The Knidos Lion, a colossal marble lion found near the city in the 1850s, is now in the British Museum.
