Troy

Troy occupies a mound called Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey near the Dardanelles strait, excavated from the 1870s onward by Heinrich Schliemann, who set out to find the city described in Homer's Iliad. Archaeologists have identified at least nine major stratified layers of settlement spanning roughly 3000 BC to Roman times, each rebuilt on the ruins of the one before, with the layer known as Troy VIIa most often proposed as the one whose destruction inspired the Trojan War tradition. Its excavated walls, gateways and house foundations remain visible today, and the site is closely associated with the history of archaeology itself as a discipline that moved from myth toward systematic excavation. UNESCO inscribed Troy as a World Heritage Site in 1998.