According to legend, the Trojan War pitted a coalition of Greek cities against the city of Troy, or Ilion, after the kidnapping of Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta, by the Trojan Paris. Several cities claim to be the site of the confrontation.
In the 18th century, emerging archeology confronted this mythological literature with one objective: to find the location of Troy. Although we can observe traces of destruction at certain levels of the city, there is nothing to indicate that they correspond to the events described by Homer.