Çanakkale in 2 days: Troy, Kilitbahir and Gallipoli

Starting the day at the Troy Museum, which rises at the entrance to the site, is the easiest way to make sense of the excavations. The building in Tevfikiye village stands on an area of 11,200 square metres, and its 3,000 square metres of galleries lay out the finds from the mound layer by layer along a timeline. Once you have seen which period the pottery, weapons and jewellery belong to, the heaps of stone on the site stop being a puzzle and become a story you can read. Construction began in 2013 and was completed in October 2018; even the architecture hints at the layers hidden underground.

The mound, a short walk from the museum, shows more than 3,000 years of continuous settlement in nine layers: the earliest goes back to the Early Bronze Age and the city lived on until the end of the Roman period. Its layering, at the point where Anatolia, the Aegean and the Balkans meet, is still a yardstick for many excavations in Europe and the Aegean. Heinrich Schliemann first dug the mound in 1871; Wilhelm Dörpfeld and Carl Blegen followed, and work continues today. The 12.5-metre wooden horse at the entrance was made in 1975 by the Turkish artist İzzet Senemoğlu from pine trees brought from the Kaz Mountains; Troy has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1998.

After lunch, head back into town to the Anadolu Hamidiye Bastion in the Barbaros neighbourhood. This historic defence site on the Asian shore of the strait covers 104,609 square metres and today has three parts: the Gallipoli Campaign History Museum, a culture park and Miniature Gallipoli, a scaled-down model of the ground where the campaign was fought. Seeing tomorrow's places on maps and models first makes it much easier to find your bearings across the water in the Gallipoli Historical Site. The site was registered in 1976 and, under a 2018 protocol, handed to the Gallipoli Historical Site Directorate for ten years.

End the day on Çanakkale's seafront, facing the strait. Walking along the waterfront you can see Kilitbahir, tomorrow's first stop, on the opposite shore, and it becomes very clear how close the two sides are at one of the narrowest points of the Dardanelles. The large wooden horse in the city centre is a leftover from the 2004 film Troy and one of the most photographed corners of town. For dinner, look for the sardines Gelibolu is known for or the region's cheeses; the food section below explains what to look for and where.

Take the morning ferry to the European shore and land at Kilitbahir. The castle is one of the fortifications Mehmed the Conqueror had built, together with Çimenlik Castle on the opposite shore, to control shipping through the strait. The chronicler Tursun Bey records that after the conquest of Istanbul two facing castles were built at the narrowest point of the strait and fitted with cannon. With its cloverleaf plan and thick walls, the inner keep commands the small town below and the water; from the ramparts you will be surprised how close yesterday's waterfront looks.

Namazgah Bastion, right next to Kilitbahir, shows what the strait's defences looked like in 1915. The bastion has 26 gun emplacements that served different purposes during the war; the central one has been arranged as a museum, and a 1:100 scale model of the bastion greets you at the entrance. Its name is said to come either from the bastion's resemblance to open-air prayer grounds or from soldiers holding communal prayers here during the war. Walking this earth-covered line after the stone walls of the castle lets you see side by side how the same shore was defended across the centuries.

The Gallipoli Epic Promotion Centre at Kabatepe is a good place to start if you want to grasp the campaign as a whole before entering the Gallipoli Historical Site. The building is entirely underground; its halls tell the story of the 1915–1916 Gallipoli Campaign in a chronological and thematic order, and the film shows bring events to life step by step. The centre was designed so that the campaign is not forgotten and its legacy is handed on to future generations, and it opened to visitors on 7 June 2012. You will visit the fronts you see here one by one on the ground in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, drive up to the 57th Infantry Regiment Memorial Cemetery on the Kabatepe–Conkbayırı road. The 57th Regiment was the first Turkish unit to meet the Anzac soldiers advancing on the Arıburnu front. Built on 12 December 1992, the cemetery is symbolic; the actual burial ground is in the Çataldere valley at the southern end of Bomba Ridge. The relief opposite the entrance depicts the counter-attack of 25 April 1915. This is a place of remembrance: keeping quiet, walking slowly among the headstones and reading the inscriptions is the right way to visit.

Chunuk Bair, one of the highest points on the road, is a ridge looking out over both seas of the Gallipoli peninsula. There are three Turkish monuments here; the newest is the bronze statue of Atatürk right beside the New Zealand Memorial. On its pedestal, in his own words, is the account of how on 10 August 1915 a piece of shrapnel that struck Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal in the chest was stopped by the watch in his pocket. Monuments of different nations standing side by side on the same hill are a reminder that this is now a shared place of remembrance.

Finish the day at Anzac Cove, on the road down to the Aegean. Australian and New Zealand troops landed on this narrow 600-metre beach on 25 April 1915, and every year the cove still welcomes visitors who come for the dawn service. Standing on the quiet shore and looking at the steep slopes rising right behind it, you understand the ground the landing troops faced. The Gallipoli Historical Site covers about 33,000 hectares and holds the memorials, war graves and cemeteries of both sides; all of them deserve the same respect.