Its massive conglomeration of courtyards, turrets, galleries and sunken gardens is best explored in the stillness of noon. Once the crowds have gone, the air is filled with the hum of the bees and the screech of the cicadas. Amateurs of heraldry may recognize the Plantagenet, d'Aubusson, Loredan and other prominent coats-of arms on the ramparts. Parts of the walls are built of large slabs of greenish granite which the knights removed from the ruins of the Mausoleum. Other classical fragments are gathered for display in the inner courts.
Peacocks strut among marble statues and mollusk-encrusted amphorae.
The collections of the Museum of Underwater Archeology are housed in the Castle of St. John. The museum, the most important of its kind in the world, is the brainchild of the collaborations of the Director Oguz Alpozen and Dr. George Bass, and his Institute of Nautical Archaeology, and contains treasures from a series of historic wrecks discovered along Turkey's southern shores. On display in the castle's Gothic Chapel is a full scale reconstruction of one third of an Eastern Roman wreck from the 7th century A.D. excavated by Dr. Bass. The Italian Tower houses coins and jewelry from all periods.