Troy - Capital ancient town of Homer´s Ilias

Troy is, as far as we know, one of the most well known ancient places in the world. This is leading back to Homer in straight line as he was responsible author to write about the history of the town Troy in his famous epos called “Ilias” about 3.000 years ago. 

The main idea of his epos is about the King of Troy, who kidnapped beautiful Greek Princess Helena to Troy. But Helena was already married to the King of Sparta.

To get Helena back, the Greek army tried to conquer the town for a couple of years but they were not successful. At least they had this well known idea to build the huge and famous wooden horse. The people of Troy thinking this is a present of the already gone Greek army, so they pulled the horse into the centre of the town. In the following night the Greek soldiers came out of their hidy-hole from inside of their wooden horse and were able to beat the surprised army.

The German scientist Heinrich Schliemann was so much fascinated when he heard about that story, the he immediately decided to find the place of the event. Because of his excavation and the recovering of the famous golden treasures of Troy he set the town alive again and so became responsible for millions of guests visiting the ancient city ruins until today.

Today there are just a few ruins to see anymore. In comparison to other ancient places like Ephesus or Pergamon Troy is less viewable. But because of the famous story about the wooden horse Troy is still a magnet for millions of tourists. Mythology is quite important fact for people to travel.

Troy was most likely located on the 15-meter-high settlement mound of Hisarlık on the Dardanelles. The settlement may have controlled access to the Black Sea since the Bronze Age. At that time, ships could not yet sail against the wind. According to Manfred Korfmann, they therefore waited in the fortress's harbour for favourable winds, and the tolls, pilotage fees, and protection charges that the ships had to pay to Troy brought the city wealth. This view, however, is controversial: Both the existence of substantial shipping from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea during the late Bronze Age and the fact that the fortress's harbour would have been used for this purpose are doubted.

The site gained fame in antiquity through Homer's epic poem, the Iliad, and the legendary Trojan War described therein. Even in late antiquity, the site and its legendary heroes were highly revered in the Roman Empire (see the Aeneid), and the hill of Ilium was widely known. With the beginning of the Christian Middle Ages, Troy (and thus also the location of the city) was forgotten.

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