Troy is an ancient city, located South of the Southwest end of the Dardanelles/Hellespont and Northwest of Mount Ida at Hisarlik. This famous city was the setting of the Trojan War as described in Iliad, one of the three epic poems, attributed to Homer, an ancient Greek author!
Homer was believed by the ancient Greeks to have been the first and greatest of the epic poets! His three famous poetic collections: the Illiad, the Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns, are still subjects of study for the literary academics. Iliad, introduces the readers to the people and the culture of Troy, a legendary city with a history of 40,000 years. He gave a glimpse to the siege of Troy by Spartan and Achaean warriors from Greece in the 13th or 12th century B.C. Achaeans, unable to break the defense walls of the city, decided to set up a trick. They offered a huge wooden horse as a gift to the Trojans! This resulted them to loose the city, because inside this huge horse there were dozens of Achaean soldiers, ready to combat! For all its actuality, there was a Trojan War, which possibly took place in the 12th century BC, and it was around the time Hittite Wilusa converted to Hellenic Illion, and later to Troia.
Over the years, Troy was destroyed and rebuilt nine times, each time on a different layer! The first city on the site of Troy was Wilusa, founded in the 3rd millenium by the Hittites. Situated over the Hisarlik Hill, in order to keep the total control of Dardanelles, a key route connecting Meditteranean with the Black Sea. However, over the years, all later invaders, favoured Bosphorus instead of Dardanelles for their intercontinental crossings. In 306, Constantine the Roman Emperor, also believed on the power of Bosphorus, this is why he found there the new capital for his empire, Constantinopole! As Constantinopole flourished, Troy eventually stoped to be a place of interest.
Today, Troy is a popular archeological site, attracting thousands of visitors from all over the world! In addition to being a national park, UNESCO declared Troy in the list of the World Heritage, in 1998. The nearest main center to Troy, is Çanakkale (about 30 km). There are minibuses travelling to and from Çanakkale local bus station, located under the bridge by the river. The trip takes around 45 minutes. From Çanakkale, the minibuses are scheduled to leave every hour starting at 7am with the last one at 3pm