Mount Ida (Kazdağları), Adatepe Stone Village and the Altar of Zeus

Forming the dramatic 1,774-metre natural border between Çanakkale and Balıkesir provinces just east of Assos, Mount Ida (Kazdağları) is the mountain of classical Greek mythology: here Paris of Troy judged the beauty contest of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite (sparking the Trojan War), and from these pine-clad peaks Homer writes in the Iliad that Zeus sat on his throne at Gargaron to watch the battles on the plain of Troy. Thanks to the meeting of alpine mountain air and sea breezes over millions of olive trees, the southern slopes of Kazdağları boast some of the highest oxygen levels in the Mediterranean.

1. Adatepe Village & The Altar of Zeus (Zeus Sunağı, 25 mins east of Assos)

Three kilometres uphill from Küçükkuyu on the southern foot of Mount Ida lies Adatepe, a remarkably preserved Ottoman-Greek stone village surrounded by ancient olive and cypress groves. After villagers abandoned many houses in the 1980s, writers, architects and artists from Istanbul bought and restored the two-storey stone houses under strict heritage rules, turning Adatepe into a peaceful, non-commercialised sanctuary shaded by two 500-year-old plane trees in the village square (stop here for herb-infused olive-oil ice cream and cold-pressed stone-mill olive oil):

• Walking to the Altar of Zeus (Zeus Sunağı, 10 minutes from the village entrance): a shaded 700-metre pine-forest path leads out to the edge of a rocky limestone promontory overlooking the entire Gulf of Edremit, the Ayvalık islands and Lesbos. Carved straight out of the living bedrock is a stepped prehistoric and classical rock platform with subterranean water cisterns and libation basins (alongside the small stone tomb of local saint Erdede), where ancient sacrifices were offered to Zeus.

2. The Adatepe Olive Oil Museum (In Küçükkuyu) & Yeşilyurt Village

Right on the main coastal highway at the foot of the Adatepe road in Küçükkuyu, step inside a restored historic soap and olive-oil factory housing the Adatepe Olive Oil Museum (Zeytinyağı Müzesi, Free Admission) to see towering cast-iron hydraulic presses, giant terracotta storage amphorae (küp) and traditional cold-press stone wheels, with complimentary tastings of early-harvest Mount Ida olive oil and lavender-olive soaps. Five minutes further east, the stone hillside village of Yeşilyurt offers pine-scented boutique hotels and hiking trails, while the northern Çanakkale flank of Mount Ida around Ayazma Pınarı Nature Park (in Bayramiç, 1 hour from Çanakkale) features icy waterfalls cascading through beech and fir forests (the exact ancient site of the mythical Judgement of Paris).