Homer’s Troy around 1200 B.C.E., is very well defended with its castle, lower city and defense trench.
Schliemann showed that Troy was at Hisarlık. But there were several settlements there. So which settlement was Homer's Troy? Since the beginning of the excavations at Hisarlık attempted to identify the Troy, that is Priam's city. Schliemann thought that the "burned city" Troy II, where he found the famous treasures in 1873, was Homer's Troy. After Schliemann's death, the architect W. Dörpfeld who made excavations in 1893-94, placed Priam's city at Troy VI., C. Blegen carried out very meticulous excavations in Troy in 1932-1928, claimed that the layer VIIa was Homer's Troy. Osman Korfmann claims, Homer's Troy (around 1300-1180 B.C.E. = (W)Ilios/Taru(w)isa/Wilusa) corresponds to Troy VIi (=Troy VIIa). The city, which is devastated by an earthquake, is rebuild by its inhabitants with some storage cellars in the tower field. Old structure remnants and especially the defending system were used again, and even new roads and towers are added. The material cultural remnants indicate that there no interruption regarding the settlement; on the contrary, it seems that the "richness" had increased. But the tense situation is felt everywhere: for example, the entries which were open before were now closed. Settlement became more populated in and out of the castle, It seems that the inhabitants were preparing for a war. But the only shared point of this different layers was that they were damaged during excavations. Ironically, the best evidence for the identity of Homer's Troy came not from Hisarlık but elsewhere. The tablets unearthed at Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite empire in central Anatolia, mention a city called Tarwisa/Wilusa and wars fought for the city. Recent discoveries and studies suggest that Hisarlık/Troy is Tarwisa/Wilusa mentioned in Hittite texts.
