The Search for Troy
For centuries the Trojan War was thought to be only a story. Then a businessman dug into a hill in Türkiye and found a city.
What was reported
Homer's Iliad tells of the siege of Troy by the Greeks. By the 1800s many scholars thought Troy was a myth. Frank Calvert, a British consul who owned part of the hill of Hisarlik, believed it was the site, and in 1870 the German businessman Heinrich Schliemann began digging there.
Schliemann found the remains of a series of cities built on top of one another, and a hoard of gold he called 'Priam's Treasure'. His methods were crude, and he destroyed much of the layer now thought to match Homer's Troy.
Explanations offered
Archaeologists have since identified at least nine cities at the site. The layers from the late Bronze Age, around 1300 to 1180 BC, show signs of destruction, and Hittite records mention a city called Wilusa that may be Troy. Whether a war like Homer's happened is still debated. Schliemann's gold turned out to be about a thousand years older than Homer's Troy.
- When
- Excavated from 1870
- Where
- Hisarlik, Çanakkale, Türkiye
- Witnesses
- Frank Calvert, Heinrich Schliemann and later archaeologists
- Status
- Partly explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.