Troy Things to Do

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The Roman Odeon was intended for the presentation of musical performances. Visible behind it are the Troy VI fortification walls and a pillar which belongs to a large house, the “Pillar House” of the Troy VI period.

The Odeon, the baths and the nearby Bouleterion lie at the edge of the agora, the market place, where the public life of the city was focussed. The Odeon has a semi-circular orchestra, with a skene (stage-building) in which stood an over-sized cuirassed statue of the Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138). The orchestra is bordered by a wall of lime-stone slabs above which rise tiers of seats constructed of large limestone blocks and divided by aisles into wedge-shaped sections.

Slightly to the left, behind the trees is the Bouleuterion (council-chamber) of Greek and Roman Ilion. One part of the building lies over the Troy VI fortification wall. The interior was enclosed on all four sides by a wall so that the council could conduct its business in private.

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This is the lower city, to the west of Troy VI-late VIIa citadel (14th-13th century BC). Stone foundations of well built houses are clearly visible; they are very close to one another. The houses flank the street leading to the citadel.

The almost complete foundation walls of a terrace house are particular important (Troy VIIa). At the back of the house, the rooms rise to two storeys. The finds of a bronze statuette and a terracotta bull figurine suggest that cultic performances might have taken place in one of the rooms.

After the destruction of Troy VI by an earthquake, the city gate was blocked and the street system was changed. Finds such as weapons, burnt strata and skeletons suggest that Troy VIIa (c. 1180 BC) fell as the result of an attack. In the following period Troy VIIb, when foreigners from the Balkans came to Troy, the settlement was concentrated in and close to the citadel. The streets and squares are filled with house walls and big storage jars (pithoi).

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The sanctuary was, perhaps, founded as early as the first quarter of the seventh century BC. It was dug into the ruins of the lower town of Troy VI and VII and these Archaic remains seem to have included altars, walled precincts and large buildings, perhaps temples. Best preserved is the altar in the so-called Lower Sanctuary. It is not known to which god or gods the Archaic Sanctuary was dedicated, but it remained in use throughout the Hellenistic period and long into Roman Imperial times.

In the middle of the third century BC, a new and lavishly decorated building was constructed to the side of two open air precincts (the Upper and Lower Sanctuaries). The interior of the building featured painted plaster and a pebble mosaic with a cutting in the floor for a torch and the base of a statue. During the first half of the second century, this Mosaic Building was dismantled and two new temples were built side by side. The elaborate decoration within the Mosaic Building indicates that religious activity occurred inside, as does the existence of the torch base. Such a layout suggests that the Sanctuary was associated with secret rites and this identification is consistent with the plans of the Upper and Lower Sanctuaries. The exterior walls of both precincts were nearly four metres high, which indicates that sacrifices at the altars were screened off from the uninitiated. The sanctuary was built at a site where the island of Samothrace can easily be seen, and it seems likely that this is the Sanctuary of the Samothracian gods mentioned in Trojan inscriptions.

The Sanctuary suffered severely in the destruction of Ilion by Fimbria in 85 BC. As a part of a later reconstruction, instigated by the Emperor Augustus (31 BC – AD 14), a new altar was built at a higher elevation. Beside it are the stepped foundations of what was probably a grandstand used for viewing religious ceremonies.

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This building stood on the lowest terrace of the great citadel mound and formed part of the Troy VI palace complex. The ceramic finds of this period display not only an advanced, independent style, but also a taste for Mycenaean imports. Immediately noticeable are four vertical offsets in the wall. The stones here are carefully cut. This detail indicates the taste of the occupants of the palace and their desire for prestige. This achievement is all the more impressive when one considers that iron tools were not available in this period. Homer repeatedly mentions the “beautiful” walls of Troia/Ilios.

Inside the L-shaped layout of House VIM were several rooms about whose function little is known. Storage-vessels (pithoi) have been preserved, so there was storage here. A few steps show that there was a second storey, but none of it survives. Just as with the other buildings of the Troy VI period, the outer side-walls of House VIM are both oriented towards the central point of the citadel. This is evidence of a unified architectural plan, which guaranteed that streets of uniform width could run between the buildings, up to the centre of the citadel. House VIM continued in use and was enlarged during the succeeding phase of Troy VIIa.

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Part of the fortification wall contains the partially restored ramp of the Troy II citadel. Troy II was built on top of the remains of Troy Ia-Ie (i.e. Early and Middle Troy I) and is subdivided into eight building-phases, IIa-IIh.

During this period the circuit-wall was several times built further out so as to enlarge the citadel. The rebuilding’s can be recognised in the remains of the earlier, partly walled-up gates. The wall in the final phase of Troy II consisted of a substructure of limestone with layers of mud brick above. It was around 330m long and 4m thick and enclosed an area of about 8800 sq. m. The entrance gate was approached by an impressive ramp paved with flat stones and flanked by mud brick walls. But its size and position probably make the eastern gate, a more plausible candidate for the main entrance to the citadel.

There was probably a stone rampart (unexcavated) to overcome the difference in altitude between the approach-road and the settlement. The Troy II citadel came to an end with a catastrophic fire which left behind a burnt layer more than two metres thick. To the left of this gate, Schliemann found the legendary “Priam’s Treasure”. This discovery, together with the burnt layer, caused Schliemann to believe that Troy II was the Homeric Troia/Ilios that he was looking for but he was off by a good 1200 years. But in 1890, the last year of his life, he recognised his mistake. The more than twenty “Troy Treasures” are currently preserved in eight different locations in seven cities, including, since World War II, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

One of the best sites to see the different layers of Troy settlements (of which there are a total of nine), is close to the Ramp. Each layer has been clearly marked to give some idea as to how and when each was built.

During the first three years of excavation, Schliemann had a deep north-south trench, 40 metres wide and seventeen deep, dug through the centre of the mound. It was conceived as a test-trench, reaching down to bedrock, by means of which Schliemann hoped to find “Priam’s citadel”. In the course of this operation important building remains from overlying layers were partially destroyed. At the bottom of the trench Schliemann found remains of walls belonging to the Early Troy period (c. 2920 BC). It was only in the American excavations of the 1930’s, and in the work carried out since 1988, that the Troy I period was more closely studied.

Directly below the spot are the remains of a sloping stone wall backed by a rubble fill. This is thought to be a rampart-like Early Troy I fortification. The rows of parallel, rough stone walls are the foundations of relatively large, close-set houses of the Early Bronze Age (c. 2920 BC). Some of these elongated houses had porches. Of particular interest is the “herringbone” technique in masonry in which stones are laid diagonally.

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This is a section of the fortifications of Early and Middle Troy I, together with a tower. The gateway was only two meters wide. Troy I was built around 2920 BC directly on bedrock.
Archaeological deposits four metres deep suggest a long period of occupation. The slightly inward-sloping fortification wall encloses a settlement which had a diameter of about ninety metres.

In front of the tower stood at least one stone stele with relief decorations showing the upper half of a human figure possibly holding a weapon. The tradition of such stelae seems to live on at Troy for centuries: a good 1000 years later such stone stelae reappear in front of the south gate of Troy VI.