Troy
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Archaeological Site Of Troy, 1998); Nine Principal Settlement Layers, Roughly 3000 BC To AD 500 · Tevfikiye, Canakkale
There is no single Troy. There are at least nine cities stacked on one mound above the Dardanelles plain, built and burned and rebuilt between roughly 3000 BC and the Roman period, and the visit is a walk around a cross-section of all of them. Heinrich Schliemann arrived in the 1870s convinced Homer was describing a real place, dug a trench straight through the middle of the mound and destroyed a good deal of what he was looking for - his scar is still one of the first things you see. The walls and tower of Troy VI are the best candidate for the Homeric city and are genuinely impressive. The rest requires imagination, and honest visitors often say so. What changed the experience was the Troy Museum, opened in 2018 a kilometre away: a rusted steel cube holding the finds and, more usefully, the explanation the mound itself cannot give. Do the museum and the site together, or do not bother with either.
Tevfikiye Koyu, Troya Oren Yeri, Canakkale Merkez, Tevfikiye, Canakkale, Turkiye
Open daily with longer summer hours and an earlier winter close. The Troy Museum in Tevfikiye, a kilometre from the ruins, keeps its own hours and has its own ticket, and has been closed one day a week. Excavation seasons close sections of the site. Check both before travelling.