A long, sloping wall of pale stone blocks beside a boardwalk where a few visitors walk, under a deep blue skyMulti-layer city mound
Photo: Jorge Láscar from Australia · CC BY 2.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)
First settlements · Çanakkale

Troy (Truva)

UNESCO World HeritageEarly Bronze–Roman25 km from Çanakkale

Layer upon layer of cities, from about 3000 BC to Roman times, cut through by Heinrich Schliemann’s trench in the 1870s. A World Heritage Site since 1998; the Troy Museum by the site opened in 2018.

Plan the visitHow to get thereRead its tale

Plan your visit

Time to allow
About 2 hours, and the museum next door

For a first visit at an easy pace.

Stay in
Çanakkale

25 km away as the crow flies, so allow more on the road.

On a trip
Troy, Pergamon and Sardis

Day 1 of 4.

Hours and tickets
Check before you go

Opening hours and prices change: see muze.gov.tr (opens in a new tab).

Times are our estimates. Distances are straight lines.

Where it is and how to get there

In the north-west, in Çanakkale province, by the village of Tevfikiye, on a low mound called Hisarlık. It is 25 to 30 km south of the town of Çanakkale.

By minibusMinibuses (dolmuş) run from the centre of Çanakkale to Tevfikiye village, by the site. They leave only now and then, so check the times in town.
By carTurn off the Çanakkale–İzmir road towards Tevfikiye; the village is about 5 km along the side road.
Çanakkale

Open in OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab) · Directions to Troy (opens in a new tab)

The walk, with what you’re looking at

The ruins are a low mound about 200 m across, with nine cities heaped inside it. The Troy Museum stands in the village, about 800 m east of the ruins, and belongs in the visit.

  1. The Troy Museum

    A rust-coloured cube in the village. A ramp leads you down through the nine layers of Troy, and the displays then cover finds from Troy and from the Troad around it. See it before or after the ruins: it explains what the stones are.

  2. The wooden horse

    A large wooden horse stands on the square by the entrance gate, with a ladder up into its body. It is a monument, not a find.

  3. Troy II

    Foundations of the great houses called megarons, from the 3rd millennium BC, in the second-oldest of the nine cities.

  4. The walls of Troy VI and VII

    The stone walls of the Late Bronze Age city, with a sloping face and the zigzag “sawtooth” outline. Many scholars link this city with Homer’s Troy.

  5. Greek and Roman Ilion

    The remains of the later city: the council house (bouleuterion), the theatre and the odeon, a small covered theatre.

the tale of

Troy (Truva)

The city of Homer’s Iliad, or the nearest thing to it. Nine cities were built one on top of another on a low hill, and digging began with Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s.

First villages, 9600–3000 BC →

  1. About 3000 BC
    A walled village

    The first settlement, Troy I, goes up on a low hill over what was then a gulf of the sea. It has stone walls from the start.

  2. 2500s BC
    Troy II

    A larger citadel with stone walls and big halls round a courtyard. Schliemann later digs up a hoard of gold here and calls it Priam’s treasure.

  3. From about 1700 BC
    The great walled city

    Troy VI and VII have a citadel with sloping stone walls and towers, and a lower town spread around it. Its place at the mouth of the Dardanelles makes it a trading centre.

  4. About 1200 BC
    The Trojan War?

    Homer’s Iliad tells of a ten-year war for a city called Troy. The Late Bronze Age city here shows signs of destruction, but archaeologists cannot say whether a war like Homer’s ever happened.

  5. Greek and Roman times
    Ilion

    The city is rebuilt as Ilion, later Ilium, with a council house, a theatre, an odeon and baths. Visitors come for its link with the Iliad.

  6. About AD 500
    The end

    A series of earthquakes around AD 500 ends the life of the city.

  7. 1870s
    Schliemann digs

    Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman, cuts a deep trench through the mound and finds the cities below one another, nine in all. The gold he calls Priam’s treasure ends up abroad, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

  8. 1996 and 1998
    National park and World Heritage

    The land round Troy becomes a historical national park in 1996, and UNESCO lists the site in 1998.

  9. 2018
    The museum opens

    The Troy Museum opens beside the site in October 2018. Excavation still goes on.

Photographs

6 photographs from Wikimedia Commons, each with its author and licence.

A paved stone ramp of fitted flat slabs running up between two rough stone walls

Photo: Mark Landon · CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)

A big wooden horse seen from below, with a square cabin on its back, small windows in its body and a cypress tree behind

Photo: Serragok · CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)

A small semicircle of stone seats in a green hollow, with a wooden platform and steps in front and trees beyond

Photo: Carole Raddato · CC BY-SA 2.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)

A big cube of rust-red steel with narrow windows, and a concrete ramp leading down to the museum entrance where a group of visitors stands

Photo: Troya Müzesi from Çanakkale, Türkiye · CC BY-SA 2.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)

A wooden boardwalk winding above stone ruins and a small domed stone structure, with green trees and a wide plain beyond

Photo: Barrowbob · CC BY-SA 4.0 (opens in a new tab) · Wikimedia Commons (opens in a new tab)

Good to know

  • The ministry lists the site and the museum on two pages: see muze.gov.tr for tickets and for the museum’s own hours.
  • Wear sturdy shoes. The paths are dirt tracks and boardwalks, uneven and slippery after rain.
  • Much of what Schliemann found went abroad, among it the gold he called Priam’s treasure, now in Moscow.
  • Assos, on the ministry’s list of nearby sites, can be added to the same trip.
  • The ministry runs an audio guide for the site: see its page on muze.gov.tr.

Where its treasures are now

In Türkiye

Troy gold jewellery (Penn Museum group)

c. 2400 BC. 24 gold ornaments from the period of Schliemann's 'Priam's Treasure', returned from the Penn Museum on indefinite loan in 2012 and now shown at the Troy Museum.

Troy Museum, Çanakkale (Tevfikiye)
In Türkiye

Polyxena Sarcophagus

c. 520–500 BC. Found at Gümüşçay in 1994, with the sacrifice of Polyxena at Achilles' tomb; the earliest known sarcophagus with a Trojan War scene.

Troy Museum, Çanakkale (Tevfikiye)
Abroad

Treasure of Priam (Troy gold, 'Jewels of Helen')

Held abroad. Claimed by Türkiye and by Germany; Russia keeps it under its 1998 trophy-art law

Pushkin Museum (most); some pieces in the State Hermitage, Moscow / St Petersburg
Abroad

Troy jewellery (24 gold pieces)

Lent to Türkiye indefinitely in 2012 (loan, not transfer of title)

Penn Museum (University of Pennsylvania), Philadelphia

From here

Also nearby

  • 24 km
    Alexandria Troas

    City, Hellenistic–Roman

  • museum
    Troy Museum

    Polyxena sarcophagus

  • museum
    Çanakkale Archaeology Museum

    Troy finds

Location precise · Source (opens in a new tab)