Wooden horse of Troy

Troy – the legendary city from Homer’s Iliad where Paris, a Trojan prince, took the beautiful Helen after he had abducted her from Sparta. This was the scene of the Trojan War where the cunning Odysseus came up with the idea of the Trojan Horse. This deception allowed the Greek army to sneak into Troy under cover of darkness and sack the city… exciting stuff!

Archaeologists like Heinrich Schliemann say that the ruined city at Hisarlik on Turkey’s Aegean coast is Troy, and given the legends, it was high on my ‘must see’ list for Turkey.

I have to say though I was a little disappointed. As ruins go it was interesting, but felt a little small to me. I think perhaps I’d listened more to the legends and not enough to the facts.

At least there was the Wooden Horse of Troy.

At the entrance to the site is a 12.5 metre high wooden horse made from cedar wood which was first built in 1974 by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism. This is great fun – you can climb inside it just like the Greeks in the legend. Though these days it is more likely to be full of Japanese tourists!