Bodrum: Ancient Stones, Modern Appetites

Between visits to The Bodrum EDITION, Susona Bodrum, LXR Hotels & Resorts, and METT, Douglas Blyde dines at Ruins and Maçakızı and discovers a peninsula of ancient stone, ambitious cooking, old money and modern excess.

‘When you reach the top of the hill, you will see Bodrum. Don’t assume that you will leave as you came,’ wrote Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, exiled here a century ago after a controversial article about condemned military deserters. As Halikarnas Balıkçısı, the Fisherman of Halicarnassus, he turned punishment into a lifelong attachment to the Aegean and helped inspire the Blue Voyage.

The advice still works. Keep moving, and do not mistake the peninsula for a single town.

Bodrum is a geography of competing appetites: Torba’s pine-backed coves, Yalıkavak’s marina money, Bodrum town’s maritime grit, Gümüşlük’s low-slung dinners and Gümbet’s amplifier-fuelled strip.

Thankfully, Ibiza, Mykonos, Saint-Tropez and Dubai still absorb much of influencer culture’s heavy artillery. Bodrum has its share of people apparently holidaying for the benefit of digital strangers, but its better corners retain a distinctly Turkish pulse.

September may be the clever month. The sea has banked the summer heat, restaurants are still running and high-season traffic has loosened its grip.

The Bodrum EDITION PRESS HANDOUT The Bodrum EDITION: polish, interrupted by place Drive west past Yalıkavak marina’s immaculate floating palaces of money and chrome to The Bodrum EDITION on Tilkicik Bay.

Over a drink at the beach bar, Federico Penzo, who arrived in 2018, described how quickly the surrounding hills have filled with resorts. EDITION itself folds into one of those slopes, descending towards the sea like a particularly well-funded village. The stairs provide useful penance for lunch; buggies exist for anyone unwilling to repent twice.

Our Deluxe Sea View room came in the brand’s full spectrum of beige, improved by a very good lemon and olive-oil cake.

At the bottom lies the stronger reason to be here: a calm sandy bay, unusually sheltered from the winds that trouble much of the peninsula, where white marble pebbles gleam beneath the water and shoals of tiny silver fish nose around your ankles. The beach draws a well-heeled procession of camera-ready faces, handsome cover-ups and expensive sunglasses, yet remains more polished than aggressively party-driven.

The Bodrum EDITION Douglas Blyde Breakfast is excellent, particularly the gözleme rolled out, filled and cooked in front of you.

Michelin-starred KITCHEN by Osman Sezener supplies the serious gastronomic machinery. Its tasting menu is at its best when Turkish ingredients disturb the international fine-dining grammar: local shrimp, satsuma, tarhana and mastic interested me more than avocado and truffle.

Senior sommelier, Merve Ceren Bıçak, Türkiye’s Best Young Sommelier 2026, went further, replacing the usual mixed pairing with an entirely Turkish one for us. Paşaeli Emir, from ungrafted Cappadocian vines, and Likya Arkeo Acıkara made indigenous grapes feel not like dutiful local excursions but the obvious wines to drink.

Merve Ceren Bıçak Douglas Blyde DAHA is more emphatically rooted.