Turkey caps off Year of Troy with new museum
As Turkey celebrates the 20th anniversary of Troy's inclusion in the Unesco World Heritage List, a new museum brings its 4,000 years of history and legends to life.
A treacherous wooden horse, a blind Greek poet from Smyrna, a thrilling archaeological rediscovery — Troy is an essential component of Europe's cultural memory and imagery, both as history and as literary myth. It is where the West fought the East for the first time three millennia ago, starting a rivalry not yet extinguished and giving inspiration to artists from Homer's epic Iliad to Hollywood's 2004 blockbuster.
It is in Turkey, in the Biga Peninsula — the Troad of ancient times — on the eastern shore of the Dardanelles, at a strategic crossing point linking two continents across the Aegean Sea. The brand-new Troya Muzesi (Troy Museum), which is open to the visitors but still awaiting an official inauguration, is a long-needed complement and lively introduction to the excavation site just a kilometer away, part of the Unesco World Heritage List since 1998.
