Troy

In 333 BC Alexander the Great visited Troy where he made an offering to the spirit of Priam and exchanged his weapons and armour for some kept in the Temple of Athena. Coated in oil, he then ran naked to the mound where Achilles was buried!

Later it became a Roman city called Novum Ilion Troy 1X 85 BC to 500 AD. Constantine the Great once had the idea of building the capital of the eastern Roman Empire here. After the fall to the Ottoman Empire Troy simply disappeared. Until the 19th Century some historians doubted that Troy really existed.

However in 1868 Heinrich Schliemann with permission from the Ottoman government began excavating near the village of Hisarlik. He excavated the hill and discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities from the Roman period. Schliemann declared one of these cities — at first Troy I, later Troy II — to be the city of Troy, and this identification was widely accepted at that time. Schliemann’s finds at Hisarlik have become known as Priams Treasure.

Schliemann smuggled part of Priams treasure out of the Ottoman Empire and much of it was displayed in the Berlin Museum, where it was seized by the advancing Soviet troops at the end of WWII. Eventually they were found hidden in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow where they remain to this day. International controversy is ongoing as to their rightful ownership.

In March 2014 it was announced that a new excavation would take place to be sponsored by a private company and carried out by Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. This is the first Turkish team to excavate and a 12 month excavation is planned to be led by Associate Professor Rüstem Aslan.

Despite all its legends and myths Troy is perhaps one of the less impressive of the ancient sites in Turkey and it is sometimes described as a hole in the ground! But with a great imagination and a good guide with you, Troy can be a very rewarding place to visit.