It’s all about the mice here a few miles inland from the Aegean Sea at Türkiye’s westernmost point in Çanakkale province. You just need to know where to look in this pleasant hill country of olive cultivation where a magnificent ancient marble temple will pop up before you outside of the small village of Gülpınar. And with a new bridge crossing the Dardanelles strait, it’s now easier than ever to get from Istanbul here to the Apollo Smintheus Sanctuary, or Smintheion, as you follow the country’s Aeneas Route of archaeological sites.
Small mice figurines have been placed on the steps at Smintheion temple in Türkiye’s Çanakkale province.
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The very name of Smintheion for this site means the Lord or God of the Mice, derived from the language of the Trojan-allied Mysian people. As Homer tells us in the Iliad, Apollo could stir epidemics and was thus so dubbed (surely, he lorded over rats too). Ultimately, a cult developed around the legend that Apollo could both punish kings with rodents and protect farmers and their goods and crops from the scourge of pests by dispatching them with his arrows.
As a fun reminder of the lore at the Smintheion, you can’t miss the dozens of small black mice figurines that curators have set out in various poses on the white temple steps, a corner of which have been restored. In a quirk of timing, the mice were placed there just before our modern pandemic broke out.
The Smintheion was considered a more important sacred place than the city Hamaxitus itself to which it belonged, and was second only in status to Troy’s Athena temple in this historical region here known as Troas. The 150 B.C. Ionic temple was built with 44 columns—eight on the short sides and 14 on the long—in the pseudodipteral style attributed to architect Hermongines: That is, the temple has a voluminous inner space, but the typical second row of columns within was omitted. As usual, great amounts of marble were hauled off over the millennia to build churches and mosques, and for home use.
Seldom visited now in Çanakkale province, Alexandria Troas was a hugely important city in the ancient world.
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The connection with Smintheion to Homer’s Iliad is found right in stone, with friezes depicting the Trojan War having been carved on the top of each one of the columns’ seven drums. Fragments of them can be seen in the small display hall at the entrance to the site (opening hours are seasonal).
A water source still flows here, a reminder that temples were always erected near water for oracular purposes. Beyond the temple, you come to the remains of Roman baths and cisterns.
Last year, it was reported that archaeologists had unearthed a 2,000-year-old Roman monumental tomb at Smintheion, with remains of adults and children inside. Decades ago, archaeologists also found signs of a settlement going back to the fifth millennium BC.
Not far away, in a modest two-story building and overlooking the small marina belonging to the hamlet of Babakale, you can enjoy a post-Smintheion tour with a lunch of blue fish or fresh calamari and all kinds of seafood at Karayel restaurant. In this town, which happens to have a reputation as the center for fine handcrafted knives, you’re at the westernmost tip of Asia, which also surely explains why the Ottomans built a fortress here.
Detail of a frieze in a ruin at the ancient Alexandria Troas settlement.
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A bit up the coast, it’s the three half-barrel vaulted arches at the Alexandria Troas site that first wow you. These enormous ashlar blocks belong to ruins of the Herodes Atticus bath-gymnasium complex in this city that was established in the 3rd century BC by Antigonos Monophtalmos (the One-Eyed), one of Alexander the Great’s commanders. Alexander’s successor Lysimachus changed the name in dedicating the city to the Macedonian hero. In Turkish, the site is known as Eski Stambul, or Old Istanbul, after the fact that here too a lot of stonework was hauled off to be used in building Constantinople.
With a fine harbor and home to significant granite quarries, Alexandria Troas held great strategic importance and wielded a staggering population of 100,000 souls. In Roman times, it held status as a free and autonomous city where retired Roman legionnaires were sent. Caesar considered making it a capital; Saint Paul came through several times; and, Constantine too wanted to make it the Roman capital, before choosing Byzantium.
The town of Babakale in Çanakkale province has a small marina and fortress seen here.
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In addition to the bathhouse, major ruins include temples and a basilica, a theater, odeon, stadium and the Emperor Trajan aqueduct. Looking down into the deep structural remains of various buildings in the forum area gives you another perspective of just how elaborately developed this city was. Today, the silted inner harbor is now a lake, but 2,000 years ago columns were exported here throughout the ancient world.
You can walk freely around the enormous 1,000-acre open-air site that was once enclosed by some six miles of wall. And you’ll likely encounter nary a soul the deeper you go. But with much of the Alexandria Troas ruins overgrown with thick brush, proper hiking shoes and thick pants are a must to save you grief if you trek about Indiana Jones style. Emperor Trajan isn’t dispatching any gardeners these days.
Note: Also read this post on visiting nearby Troy, as well as ones on Assos and Antandros.
