Knowing that town planning in the first millennium CE did not allow for vehicular traffic, we walked on foot our planned exit route from the Sultanahmet Suites to the Kennedy Drive that would take us out of Istanbul. Despite this, once in our hire car, we became instantly lost in the local medieval maze. Saved by a kindly soul, we headed out of Istanbul CBD but missed the crucial turn to then spend about an hour in the Mt Druitts of the city before finally getting onto the autobahn. The "Rome2Rio" website suggested that there was an excellent short cut down to the Canakkale peninsula, some 350km distant. Wrong. Should have stayed on the top quality highway rather than farmyard tracks. Our little Hyundai eventually rolled through Eceabat to the lodgings at Kilit Bahir directly opposite Canakkale town at the narrowest pinch of the Dardanelles. Old fortresses adorn both sides naturally and were last used in anger in 1915 of course. The Dardanelles today is a very busy shipping channel with a constant 2-3 kts of SW flowing current.
Unfortunately for us, the choice of this particular weekend for our visit was a bad one. With an election looming on the 8th of June, the incumbent politicians had encouraged Turks to visit Canakkale to remember the glorious defence of Turkey by Ataturk and his troops. Financial incentive was also rumoured to have been provided. And so most of Turkey descended upon the small peninsula with us. Thus, the Australian invasion of Gallipoli was repulsed by hordes of tourist buses. And I do mean a lot. Our initial attempt at getting a foothold on Anzac Cove was abandoned as the local roads became gridlocked by literally hundreds of buses. We surrendered and took the car ferry across the straits, bound for Troy, Hector, Achilles, Ajax et al.
Troy was interesting in many ways but remarkably disappointing in terms of preservation. It is more or less abandoned with the last evidence of funding a distant memory and even then by Germany. The Trojan ruins were once almost at the seaside but are now about 8km from the water. The city dates back to at least 3000 BCE and there are 9 documented "Troys" as layers built over the previous one. The city has been destroyed by fire, earthquake, siege and many other depredations. Troy was immortalised by Homer in the Iliad and Virgil in the Aeneid. The story of the Greek invasion to seek the return of the princess is likely false. The siege was probably for commercial or geopolitical reasons. The Trojan horse is also thought to be Homer's invention or even that of one of his scribes. Homer was blind and thus could not proof read his work. Alexander the Great was a fan of the work, and the city, and apparently slept with a copy of the book, amongst his other known peccadillos. Troy was held in high regard by the Romans and prospered in the Byzantine era. It was not finally abandoned until well into the Ottoman period which commenced around 1300 CE.
In the 1800's Schliemann, a wealth German chap, decided to become an "archaeologist" and started working on Troy. His work was amateurish, unscientific, and very destructive (dynamite) but later his techniques became a bit more refined. He smuggled the fabled "Priam's Treasure" out of Turkey. His wife later wore it in public in Germany. The jewels were ultimately looted from the museum in Berlin by the Red Army in 1945 and remain in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow to this day. Schiemann has been judged very harshly by history as having done more damage to Troy than the Greeks had done in the ten year siege. Interestingly, Schliemann died, in a Naples hotel room, of what sounds like meningitis following surgery to treat a middle ear infection in 1890.
PIX HERE