Çanakkale

A city in northwestern Turkey in the Marmara region, on the Dardanelles Strait. It’s a gateway to Gallipoli WWI battlefields, north of the narrow strait and the archaeological site of Troy, including a ancient theater, is southwest of the city. The site consists of the hill of Hisarlik and the fields below it to the south. The hill is a tell, composed of strata containing the remains left behind by more that 3 millennia of human occupation.

• Travel:

  • Turkey & Greece 2019
    • Fri 3/8
      • 3:00pm — Depart Pergamon
        • Bus Devotional
      • 6:30 — Arrive Çanakkale for check in hotel
      • Dinner and overnight in Canakkale
    • Sat 3/9
      • 7:00 — Morning breakfast
      • 9:00 — Check out of Hotel and Walk to Wooden Horse of Troy
      • 9:10 — Replica of the Wooden Horse of Troy and Biblical Connection with Homer
      • 10:00 — Depart Canakkale
      • Drive to Greece/Turkey Border
      • Meet with our Greek Guide

• Resources:

  • Wikipedia
  • Wikimedia
  • Web
  • Map

Replica of the Wooden Horse of Troy

An enormous wooden horse presides over the marina in Canakkale, a small port city southwest of Istanbul. The clapboard animal is a mock-up of the Trojan Horse of mythological fame. Some may recognize this specific horse from the 2004 movie “Troy.”

Despite the warnings of Laocoon and Cassandra, the horse was taken into the city gates. That night Greek warriors emerged from it and opened the gates to let in the returned Greek army (which had sailed silently back to Troy). The story is told at length in Book II of the Aeneid and is touched upon in the Odyssey.

But was it just a myth? Probably, says Oxford University classicist Dr. Armand D’Angour: Archaeological evidence shows that Troy was indeed burned down; but the wooden horse is an imaginative fable, perhaps inspired by the way ancient siege-engines were clothed with damp horse-hides to stop them being set alight.

The film depicts the true events of an escape attempt made by POWS in the German prison camp Stalag Luft III. Oliver Philpot was one of three men to make a successful escape in 1943. Philpot, together with Eric Williams and Michael Codner, used a wooden vaulting horse positioned close to the perimeter fence as a disguise for a tunnel which whey were constructing underneath the horse.

The replica was made by a Turkish artist in 1975.

Size based on the width of the widest gate discovered in the ruins of Troy and based on the fact the Trojans had to knock the upper walls down so the horse could pass into the city, the Horse would have been 25 feet tall, 10 feet wide and nearly 8 feet in length.

Title image credit

More to come...