A Castle Seen From the Sea: The Knights' Stones of Bodrum
Every boat that enters Bodrum harbour passes, without quite knowing it, beneath a wall built by four different nations. The castle's stones have gone from San Pietro to Petronium, from chapel to mosque, from prison to museum — standing in the same place, with the same patience, for five hundred years.
Read MoreThe World Beneath Kaş: The Uluburun Shipwreck
Off Kaş, a sponge diver said he'd seen "metal biscuits with ears" on the seabed. Those biscuits were the cargo of a ship that sank three thousand three hundred years ago carrying an entire age. Anchor off that same cape today, and one of the fullest cargo manifests in the world lies beneath you.
Read MoreFrom Sponge Boat to Superyacht
Bodrum's memory still holds those wooden boats: the hulls that carried the sponge diver down, shaped by a master's hand, ribs bent one by one. That tradition never disappeared; it only grew. Today Turkey's shipyards turn out everything from production motor yachts to steel superyachts beyond eighty metres — and that work is now sold to the world.
Read MoreThe Mausoleum at Halicarnassus: Queen Artemisia's Grief
A queen mixed her husband's ashes into wine and drank them. Then she built him a tomb so vast that, two thousand years later, his name still means "monumental tomb" in every language — and its stones live on inside the castle every yacht sees as it enters Bodrum's harbour.
Read MoreWhy Atlas? The King's Name Behind Our Digital Guide
According to Plato, the first king of an island at the heart of the ocean was the son of the god of the sea. When we named Oxygen's digital guide, that was exactly what we had in mind.
Read MoreThe Sponge Divers of Halicarnassus: Bodrum's Forgotten Trade
In the early morning, before the sun had warmed the walls of Bodrum Castle, small wooden boats slipped quietly out of the harbour. The men aboard said little. They knew the sea — where to find what at which depth, which cove concealed the sponge beds below, which season brought the current around. That knowledge didn't come from books. It passed from father to son, from master to apprentice. And every morning, one of those boats might not bring them back.
Read MoreThe Fisherman of Halicarnassus: The Exile Who Invented the Blue Voyage
In 1925, the writer Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı was put on a ship in Istanbul and sent into exile in a small Aegean town. At the time, Bodrum was little more than fishing boats and sponge divers, a forgotten corner of the country. The day he stepped ashore, neither he nor Bodrum knew how completely they were about to change each other's lives.
Read MoreKnidos and the Goddess of Love: The Lost Aphrodite and the Sailors' Sacred Harbor
At the very tip of the Datça peninsula, the ruins of a temple built for the world's first nude goddess statue still face the sea. The pilgrims who once sailed here to see her were also seeking a blessing for their journey.
Read MoreAtlas by Oxygen Is Now Live
After months of work behind the scenes, Atlas is now live on oxygenyachting.com. Atlas is Oxygen’s digital guide. You can ask about routes, bays, yachts, seasons, and the stories of the Aegean. No sign-up, no form — just a question, and a quiet conversation that begins with the sea.
Read MoreCities Beneath the Water: Kekova and the Lost Harbours of the Mediterranean
Below the clear water you glide across lies an entire world that once had streets, houses and harbours — now sleeping in silence.
Read MoreBeyond the Mediterranean: The Ottomans' Forgotten War in the Indian Ocean
Most imagine Ottoman seafaring confined to the Mediterranean. Yet Piri Reis and the captains who followed measured themselves against Portugal in the most distant waters on earth.
Read MorePupa Yelken: A Cat, a Wife, and a 10.5-Metre Dream
There was no GPS, no internet, and often no money. Sadun Boro put to sea all the same — and on his return, carried the dream of a whole generation.
Read MoreThe Voice of the Aegean: Neyzen Tevfik
A child lost to the Aegean at the age of seven — part mystic, part madman, part anarchist, part Diogenes — Bodrum's gift to the world was a sound.
Read MoreThe Memory of the Sea: Legends of the Aegean
A thousand years of water, a thousand years of stories. From the Sirens to Barbaros, from Piri Reis to the coastal fishermen.
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