Alexandria Troas Ancient City (Ezine, Çanakkale, Turkey)
Alexandria Troas is the site of an ancient Greek–Roman city on the Aegean coast of northwestern Turkey, just south of the island of Tenedos (Bozcaada) and southeast of the modern village of Dalyan in the Ezine district of Çanakkale Province. The urban area covered roughly 400 hectares (about 1,000 acres), enclosed by city walls with a circuit of nearly 10 km, making it one of the largest ancient cities in Asia Minor. Among the visible remains today are a large bath and gymnasium complex, an odeon, a theatre, a stadium, stretches of the city walls and the partly silted-up twin-basin harbour. (Source: “Alexandria Troas” – Wikipedia; Anzac Hotels – “Alexandria Troas Travel Guide”; Turkish Archaeological News – “Alexandria Troas”)
According to Strabo, the site was originally called Sigeia (Sigia). Around 306 BC, Alexander the Great’s general Antigonus Monophthalmus refounded it as Antigonia Troas, bringing together populations from several nearby towns, including Neandria. After the battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the Thracian ruler Lysimachus renamed the city Alexandria Troas in honour of Alexander. In the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, the city became a free and autonomous polis; under Augustus it was established as the colony “Colonia Alexandria Augusta Troas”, often referred to simply as Troas. (Source: Wikipedia – Alexandria Troas; ToposText – “Alexandria Troas (Troad)”)
Thanks to its excellent harbour on the shipping route between the Dardanelles and the Aegean, Alexandria Troas developed into the main seaport of north-west Asia Minor, with an estimated population of up to 100,000 inhabitants at its height. Ancient ships travelling between Roman Asia and Europe often embarked or disembarked here, and nautical studies describe the harbour—with its two basins and c. 600 m long quays—as a busy hub where vessels waited for favourable winds before entering the Dardanelles. (Source: Turkey Travel Planner – “Alexandria Troas, Turkey”; S. Feuser – The Roman Harbour of Alexandria Troas, Turkey, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 40.2 (2011), via Ancient Ports – PDF)
In the Roman Imperial period, Alexandria Troas was extensively embellished. Emperors Augustus and Hadrian, as well as the wealthy Athenian benefactor Herodes Atticus, invested heavily in public buildings. The best-preserved complex on the site is the enormous bath and gymnasium endowed by Herodes Atticus in the 2nd century AD, locally known as the “Bal Saray” (Honey Palace), measuring roughly 123 × 84 m—one of the largest such complexes in Anatolia. The city also boasted a Hellenistic theatre on the hilltop with spectacular views over the Troad, several odea, a nymphaeum, an extensive necropolis, and a long aqueduct that brought water from the slopes of Mount Ida. (Source: Turkish Archaeological News – Alexandria Troas; Livius.org – “Alexandria in Troas”)
Alexandria Troas also played a notable role in early Christianity. The Acts of the Apostles records that the apostle Paul sailed to Europe for the first time from Troas and later returned there, where the famous episode of the young man Eutychus took place (Acts 16:8–11; 20:5–12). For this reason, the city became an important Christian pilgrimage centre, with several bishops known from the 4th to 10th centuries AD. (Source: Wikipedia – Alexandria Troas, “Roman” section; Holy Land Photos – “Alexandria Troas: Harbor and Structures”)
Today, Alexandria Troas is a vast, partly overgrown archaeological site that is still being excavated. Since the 1990s, German and Turkish teams and, more recently, projects led by Prof. Erhan Öztepe have uncovered a large stadium, sections of the harbour walls, and new public buildings in the forum area, including a remarkable multi-sided (12-sided) domed structure and a monumental altar dated to the Roman period. These discoveries, some of which can now be explored through augmented reality experiences, are gradually revealing the urban landscape of one of Anatolia’s largest port cities. (Source: Wikipedia – Alexandria Troas; Anadolu Agency – report on a 2,000-year-old altar at Alexandria Troas; Anadolu Agency – article on the 12-sided building and AR project)