Along the Southern Dardanelles Shore: Lapseki, Parion and Bayramiç

For travellers driving toward or away from Çanakkale along the southern Marmara highway (or exploring the fertile valleys between Troy and the northern slopes of Mount Ida), three uncrowded stops highlight the agricultural and classical wealth of the wider Troad.

1. Lapseki (Ancient Lampsakos, 35 km north-east of Çanakkale Town)

Sitting at the northern Asian entrance to the Dardanelles directly beneath the eastern tower of the 1915 Çanakkale Suspension Bridge, Lapseki was founded by Phocaean Greek mariners in the 7th century BC as Lampsakos (celebrated across the ancient world for its vineyards and as the final home of the philosopher Anaxagoras). Today, the hills behind Lapseki produce Turkey's largest, juiciest PGI-protected Lapseki Cherries (Lapseki Kirazı, celebrated with a festival every June) and peaches, while its waterfront promenade offers the closest dramatic camera angle looking straight up at the 318-metre red towers of the 1915 Bridge.

2. Ancient Parion (At Kemer Village near Biga, 90 km north-east of Çanakkale)

Positioned on a coastal headland where the Dardanelles opens into the Sea of Marmara, Parion was a major Ionian port founded in 709 BC and designated an official Roman colony (Colonia Gemella Iulia Pariana) under Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus.Ongoing excavations over the past two decades have uncovered a remarkably intact Roman Theatre, an Odeon decorated with marble statues, vaulted Roman baths, a 2,000-year-old dual-harbour breakwater, and a rich necropolis whose carved marble sarcophagi and gold diadems now shine inside the Troy Museum and Biga.

3. Bayramiç: Hadımoğlu Mansion, Mehmet Akif Ersoy House and Ayazma Pınarı

Forty-five minutes south-east of Troy in the fertile Scamander (Menderes) valley at the northern foot of Mount Ida lies the market town of Bayramiç. Step inside the 1796 Hadımoğlu Konağı, one of the finest surviving 18th-century Ottoman timber-and-stone mansions in western Anatolia, operating as an ethnography museum with carved wooden ceilings and wall frescoes, visit the childhood house of national-anthem poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy, sample sweet local white tahini halva and Ezine sheep's cheese in the bazaar, and drive 20 minutes further into the mountain beech forest to the freezing waterfalls of Ayazma Pınarı Nature Park.