The Troy Museum is a four-storey cube of rust-coloured steel standing in the fields a kilometre from the archaeological site, and it solves the age-old problem of Troy: the ruins, nine cities piled one on top of another over three thousand years, are hard to read. The museum puts them in order, shows what was found in each of them and tells the story of Heinrich Schliemann, the man who found them with the Iliad in his hand and made off with the gold.
It opened in 2018, and for me it is the best way into Troy: the museum first, then the walls.
A little history
Troy was identified with the hill of Hisarlık in the 19th century. Heinrich Schliemann, a German merchant obsessed with Homer, excavated it from 1870 onwards with brutal methods, cutting a trench that destroyed entire layers, and in 1873 he found a hoard of gold that he attributed to King Priam and smuggled out of the country. It went to Berlin and has been in Moscow since 1945. Later German and Turkish excavations identified nine cities, from the Bronze Age to Roman times; the Troy of Homer’s war is thought to be Troy VI or VIIa, around 1200 BC.
For decades Türkiye campaigned for the scattered finds to come home, and it built this museum, designed by the architect Ömer Selçuk Baz, for 2018, which the country had declared the Year of Troy. It opened that year and received a special commendation in the European Museum of the Year Award 2020.
What to see in the Troy Museum
The ramp and the large pieces
You go in down a ramp that descends between monumental sculptures and sarcophagi, and from the lowest level you work your way up, floor by floor, in chronological order.
The nine cities
Models, stratigraphic cross-sections and display cases explain how the nine Troys built up one on top of another, with the pottery, tools and weapons of each. This is the floor to take slowly before you go to the site.
Priam’s Treasure
The jewellery and gold pieces that have been returned to Türkiye, alongside replicas of those still in Moscow and Berlin, and the story, told through photographs and documents, of how Schliemann got them out of the country and how his wife, Sophia, posed wearing the diadems.
The Polyxena Sarcophagus
A marble sarcophagus from the 6th century BC, found in the region and carved in relief with the sacrifice of Polyxena, Priam’s daughter, on the tomb of Achilles, with a delicacy that is genuinely moving. It is the most important piece in the museum.
Troy in myth and culture
The top floor links the Iliad with the Troys of painting, cinema and memory, and ends on a terrace looking out over the plain of the Scamander and, in the distance, the Aegean.
Tips for your visit
Allow an hour and a half. There are lifts and ramps throughout, so the whole museum is accessible, and it is air-conditioned.
- Museum first, site second: that is the order that makes the ruins speak.
- The labels are in Turkish and English, so you can follow them on your own, but with a guide who connects each display to the walls you will see afterwards you get twice as much out of it.
- In summer, see the museum in the middle of the day and the site in the late afternoon; in winter, the other way round.
- It works very well with children: the models, the gold, the wooden horse at the site afterwards and the story of Achilles.
Tickets and prices
Under the official 2027 rates published at the time of writing, a single ticket covering both the museum and the site costs €30. Prices for foreign visitors are revised every year, so check the official Turkish museums website (muze.gov.tr) before you go. On my tours the ticket is either included or I take care of it for you.
Where it is and how to get there
The museum is in the village of Tevfikiye, a kilometre from the entrance to the site and about 30 km from Çanakkale: half an hour by car or by the minibuses (dolmuş) that run from the city. From Istanbul it is about five hours by motorway, crossing the Dardanelles on the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, which takes five minutes.
How I include it in my tours
It is the stop before the site on the Troy day of the Grand Tour of Türkiye and of the tours that head south from Istanbul via Gallipoli, and I combine it with the Gallipoli trenches and with Assos. For the ruins themselves, read Troy: what to see and how to get there.
If Homer is the reason for your trip, tell me when you plan your tailor-made trip and I’ll put together two days on the Dardanelles for you.