How you can still explore the ancient city of Troy
Travel back in time to Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey through an ongoing excavation of the site believed to be the legendary city.
Driving south out of the petite port town of Çanakkale, on the northwestern tip of Türkiye, signs for “Truva” and “Troya” begin to appear with growing frequency. The bustle of modern life gives way to the pastoral, and half an hour later, you’re in the ancient city of Troy, some 3,000 years in the past.
A towering wooden horse greets you at the gate and all around are scattered ruins, the Aegean Sea in the distance, and the plains upon which the legendary Trojan War was fought in between.
“The aura is so strong, [that] when Caesar visited Troy he said, ‘Every stone has a name,’” says Rüstem Aslan, a professor at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, who has spent 40 years excavating the UNESCO World Heritage site believed to be the legendary city.
Today, Hisarlik—Turkish for “place of fortresses,” the name for the hill where the ruins lie—recounts its history through the Troy Museum and the remains of architectural structures containing the echoes of Homer’s great epic, The Odyssey. For readers of legend, it imparts something akin to time travel.
“I find it so moving,” says Homeric translator Emily Wilson, a professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She adds that “it’s still a windy city,” as described by Homer. “There’s that flatness of that landscape, where you can imagine huge armies walking across,” she adds. “Even though the coastline has changed over 2,000 years, if you go and gaze out over the water, you can still have a sense of, here are these rivers, here’s this site of this city that was important several times over and destroyed several times over.”
The lost city of Troy
The site attributed to Troy actually bears the remains of nine different cities that rose and fell over the ages. Archaeologists have assigned numbers to the layers, with Troys 6 and 7 thought to be tied to Priam’s Ilium, the setting for Homer’s Iliad, where events led to the Odyssey.
For more than 2,000 years, these dual works have stood as cultural peers to the likes of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bible—texts that shaped the foundations of the world we live in today. Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t until recently that the hilltop outside Çanakkale was recognized as Troy.
“Honestly, there’s nothing that actually says it’s Troy,” admits Eric Cline, a professor of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at George Washington University. “The later Greeks and Romans thought it was, and they called it New Ilium—New Troy. Archaeologists are pretty confident, mostly because there’s no other better candidate. Geographically it fits. Archaeologically it fits. There’s even destroyed layers that fit the [Trojan War] time period.”
Over the past 160 years, several excavations have unearthed dramatic ruins, including walls, passages, streets, an amphitheater, and a destruction layer containing burned material, skeletons, arrowheads, and slingstones that some suggest are remnants of the Trojan War.
About 90 percent of the main site has been excavated, and notably, Aslan emphasizes, it hasn’t been reconstructed, unlike sites such as Knossos in Crete. The ruins visitors see here are as they were found. “Nowhere in the Mediterranean do you have such well‑preserved Late Bronze Age ruins, except Santorini, which was covered with ash,” says Aslan.
While definitive proof of the site’s Trojan heritage has yet to be discovered, like Wilson, Aslan notes close readings of the text provide clues to the hilltop’s legendary significance.
“If you put the Homeric epic on the landscape,” says Aslan, “he couldn’t write in more detail: two rivers, islands, mountains—still there, and still more or less the same as Homer described.”
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An ongoing archaeological dig
The landscape tells the story but, Aslan, Cline, and Wilson advise checking out the Troy Museum first, which provides an in-depth guide to the city layers and displays some 2,000 Bronze Age artifacts, with another 40,000 in storage. It’s located adjacent to the ruins, marked by the towering mockup of the famed Trojan Horse—the original, of course, having been either lost to history or never existed at all.
After the museum, visit the site, “where you can feel the aura,” says Aslan. A path through the ruins explores the layers of Troy, with signs providing excellent explanations.
Cline suggests a stop at Schliemann’s Trench in particular: a 56-foot trench, where in 1871, Heinrich Schliemann—the site’s first excavator—launched his dig, infamously blasting through Troy 6 and 7, which are associated with the war, destroying part of the remnants in the process. Those interested specifically in the Trojan myth, says Cline, should focus on these layers and “the huge stones and big walls” that remain.
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Where to stay and eat
Beyond the archaeological site, the town of Çanakkale makes an easy weekend escape. Located along the lively marina is another Trojan Horse facsimile, this one used in the 2004 film Troy. A short ferry ride or drive across the strait, on the peninsula, museums preserve artifacts and stories about the Gallipoli battlefield, the infamously brutal battle fought nearby during World War I.
There are plenty of hotels and boutique short stays. But booking near the marina keeps you close to the action. Kule Hotel has a rooftop restaurant and overlooks the ferry terminal. Just outside, a winding pedestrian mall bustles with shops and seafood restaurants.
Upscale Liman Paşa Müdavim has sea views and serves dishes like bahk şiş (fish shish kebab) or the more traditionally Turkish kuzu şiş (lamb shish kebab), while busy Sardalye offers an addictive regional take on fish and chips to travelers and locals looking for quick bites.
Even in town, discoveries that further fill in the details of Homer’s tale are ongoing. After 3,000 years of history and 160 years of excavation, a sense of fascination persists. As Aslan puts it, “There are still treasures.”
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How to get there
From Istanbul, Çanakkale is about three-and-a-half hours by car or four-and-a-half hours by bus. From Izmir, it’s about four hours by car or five-and-a-half by bus.
In Çanakkale, shuttles depart hourly from Cuma Pazarı Dolmuş Station, located beneath an overpass. Look for minibuses marked “Truva” or “Troy.” Rides cost about 30 lira each way and take about 30-45 minutes.
