According to the Iliad and The Odyssey, this is where legendary Trojan War took place
Troy is an ancient city in what is now northwestern Turkey, made famous in Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and The Odyssey. Today it is an archaeological site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well. It was also recently declared a national park.
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Çanakkale – The site of the historical city of Troy is close to Canakkale. Most of the places in Çanakkale are in walking distance. There is a Tourist Information office several meters from ferryboat station (on the right if you are coming from the ferry). You can pick up a free tourist map of Çanakkale and the surrounding areas. They also have schedules of the minibuses to Troy and ferries to Bozcaada.
- Archaeological Museum, İzmir Caddesi (on the highway to Izmir, about 30 min away from the ferry harbour on foot. Minibuses are also available). Artifacts excavated from archaeological sites in the countryside surrounding Çanakkale, mostly amphorae and pottery, is among the exhibited in this museum.
- Trojan Horse — the one that is used in the movie Troy, donated to the city. Now located two minutes’ walk east of ferry harbour, on the waterfront.
The nearest main center is Çanakkale, about 30 km to the north of Troy. There are minibuses that travel to and from the Çanakkale local bus station, which is located under the bridge by the river. The trip takes ~45 minutes. From Çanakkale, the minibuses are scheduled (as of 2012/01) to leave every hour starting at 7AM with the last one at 3PM. To get back, they leave hourly starting at 9:30AM with the last one leaving at 5:30PM. An up to date schedule can be found in the Tourist Information office in Çanakkale near the ferry port.
To See & Do
Explore the ruins. Troy was destroyed and rebuilt nine times over, and each of nine different layers still has something left to this day, although amateurish archaeological excavations of late 1800s damaged some of them a lot more than others. The layer that is thought to be depicted in Homer’s Iliad is likely Troy VII, a portion of the legendary walls of which is still intact.
The admission fee to the site is 15 TL pp. Make sure that you don’t accept any of the ‘old’ Turkish money as change from the admission office. You wont be able to use it outside of Troy (for some reason certain locations still accept and distribute the old ‘New Turkish Lira’) and you will have to change it at a bank.
Climbing up the ladders of (fake, re-constructed) Trojan horse in the entrance of the site is an inevitable part of Troy experience. Better do it on weekdays as the ladders (and the interior of the horse itself) may be crowded at weekends by schoolchildren on a schooltrip (a situation which makes climbing up and down those steep stairs rather unpleasent). Winter is a fantastic time to visit Troy, as there are very few tourists around and you may even get the fake horse to yourself.
- You can also keep moving southwards via backcountry roads along the coast, passing pleasant villages and a number of ancient Greek ruins among some pretty nice Mediterranean landscapes.
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The Odyssey • Locations, Activities & History
Canakkale, Turkey