Troy

We drove on to Truva, modern-day Troy. The story of the German-American Heinrich Schliemann's 1870s discovery of Troy, following Homer's literary leads, is well enough known. Schliemann was an adventurer, made his money in the California gold rush, a treasure-hunter and relentless self-promoter, who savaged the place, but got what he was looking for. What he never fully realized was that he had uncovered a site that included as many as nine distinct cities, one atop another, going back 5,000 years. Homer's Troy, if there was such a thing, and if this is it, is conjectured to be either Troy VI or Troy VII, that is, end of the Bronze Age, 13th century BCE or so. The site was well enough known in antiquity. Xerxes sacrificed a thousand oxen there prior to crossing the Hellespont to invade Greece. The Romans reverred the place, as they did anything Greek, but especially so since they thought (after Virgil) they were descended from the Trojan Aeneas. Only in the middle ages was it "lost." Anyhow, it is one of Turkey's most popular sites, one of its many World Heritage Sites, and, like the Eiffel Tower or the Great Wall or the Taj Mahal, something you just can't miss. I think the state has done a good job with it, as complicated and dug-over as it is. But if your interests are strictly Homeric, you're not going to be pleased. Troy museum artifacts are in Canakkale, which we skipped, Istanbul, which we saw, and in Berlin, which was closed when we were there in spring of 09.

More beautiful landscape along the way

Most-photographed item at Troy

Most-photographed pose

Famous photo of Schliemann's wife wearing

"Priam's gold"--well, someone's gold

Most of the place looks like this

Northeast citadel, Troy VI

Looking toward the beaches, where most of the fighting

occurred; to the right, the Hellespont; of course, after 3000
years of silting-up, one assumes the beaches were much
nearer in the time of Agamemnon and Priam, Paris and Helen,
et al.

Schliemann's original trench; it says

something about the place that this would

be memorialized...



This, I thought, was the most compelling scene at Troy:

showing all 9 layers...

To wit...



Troy VII structure

Odeon--Roman Troy

Pillars thought to be part of Priam's palace...



South gate, Troy VI-VII

Two red squirrels, Hector of the gleaming helmet and
swift-footed Achilles, fight it out before the walls of Troy;
well, actually, on the walls of Troy