Troy, city of Homer . . .

In the Iliad, the oldest and greatest of the Greek epics, Homer tells of the wars fought between the Greeks and the Trojans. But where was Troy? In the later 19th century, the pioneering German archaeologist Schliemann rediscovered and excavated Troy, in the north wast corner of what is today Turkey.

Yet how big was Troy? Was the city mound he excavated the entire city? In recent years, excavations by the German team led by Manfred Korfmann have claimed that the excavated site was only the citadel, and that the actual city was far more extensive. His claims have been disputed: what is the truth behind the stories?

The walls of Homer’s Troy? When Schliemann dug, he found the remains of nine successive cities. the last two cites were the Greek and Roman cities, numbered 8 and 9. The Homeric city, dating to the Late Bronze Age, around 1500 to 1200 BC was Troy 6 and 7, the sixth and seventh city on the site. Here (left) we see the very impressive walls of this Bronze Age city.

The area inside the city walls was not very big - here we see a view right across the centre of the citadel area. Probably it only contained the ruler's palace, but this was swept away in the Roman period, when a temple was constructed, in its turn mostly removed by Schliemann in the 19th century. .

From the citadel, there is a fine view out over the plain of Troy, where the battles recorded in the Iliad were fought. Here the sea is invisible in the distance, but in Homeric times it would have come up closer to the city.

However there is a plateau of higher ground projecting out from the citadel into the plain. Here we can see the plain on the right, with the lower city on the left, and a trackway winding down between them. In the foreground is a broken amphora, in the process of being excavated in a house just outside the citadel walls. In the Roman period, the lower city was the site of an extensive Roman town: was it also the site of a lower city at the time of Homer's Troy, in the Late Bronze Age?

Recently, the German team under Manfred Korfmann have brought in the latest geophysical equipment to answer this question. Here we see an air photo of Troy, with the citadel at the top, looking uncharacteristically green. Superimposed on it are the results of the geophysics. These reveal esentially the layout of the Roman city. However, is there another, earlier city, of the Homeric period, on a slightly different alignment? The most obvious feature is the curving line of a defensive ditch marked by a line of red dots towards the bottom of the picture. Is this the boundary of the Homeric city?