Aeneas: From Troy to Latium

The Greeks get inside the walls in the wooden horse and Troy burns. Warned by the ghost of Hector, Aeneas fights until it is hopeless, then flees with his father Anchises on his shoulders and his small son Ascanius by the hand; his wife Creusa is lost in the dark streets. The real Troy is the mound of Hisarlık near the Dardanelles. It was settled for some 4,000 years, and archaeologists count nine cities built one on top of another, from Troy I to Troy IX.

Location precision: Hisarlık is generally identified with Homer's Troy; the city of the poem is legend.

Visitor guidance: The site and the modern Troy Museum are near Tevfikiye, south of Çanakkale; a replica wooden horse stands at the entrance.

After a false start in Thrace, the fleet sails to Delos, Apollo's sacred island, and Aeneas asks the god where to settle. The answer: go back to the land "from which your ancestors derive their birth". Nobody knows which land that is, and Anchises guesses wrong. Delos, only 3.4 km² in the middle of the Cyclades, was honoured as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The Athenians later "purified" it twice: in 426 BC they dug up every grave and moved the dead to a neighbouring island.

Visitor guidance: Boats run from Mykonos; nobody may stay overnight on the island, so plan for a day trip.

Anchises thinks the oracle means Crete, home of their ancestor Teucer, so the Trojans land there and start building a city they call Pergamea. A plague kills the people and the crops. Then Aeneas's household gods appear to him at night and explain the mistake: the Trojan line began with Dardanus, who came from Italy. "Search Italy; for Jove denies thee Crete." The fleet leaves, and is driven next to the islands of the Harpies, who foul their food and curse them.

Location precision: Pergamea has no secure identification; this point is not pinned.

At Buthrotum Aeneas finds Hector's widow Andromache and the Trojan prophet Helenus ruling a city built as a copy of the one they lost, with its own small river renamed after a Trojan stream: "You see another Simois". Helenus foretells the route to Italy and sends Aeneas to the Sibyl at Cumae. Butrint, in southern Albania, was a Greek and Roman city later flooded by an earthquake. Its Italian excavators even named one of its gates the Scaean Gate, after Troy's.

Visitor guidance: Butrint National Park is 14 km south of Sarandë; the Greek theatre, Roman baths and baptistery are on one waterside walk.

Sailing round Sicily, past Etna and the land of the Cyclops, the Trojans put in at Drepanum, "unhappy port", where Anchises dies. A year later, after Carthage, Aeneas comes back and holds funeral games for him: a ship race, a foot race, a boxing match, archery. He also founds a temple to Venus on the summit of Eryx. Drepanum is today's Trapani. Above it, on Monte Erice, the Norman Castello di Venere stands on the site of the real temple of Venus Erycina, which legend said Aeneas founded.

Location precision: The pin marks the Castello di Venere on Erice, above the port of Trapani.

Visitor guidance: A cable car climbs from Trapani to the medieval hill town of Erice in about ten minutes.

A storm sent by Juno wrecks the fleet on the African coast, where the poem begins. Queen Dido is building Carthage, takes in the castaways and falls in love with Aeneas. When the gods order him to leave, she curses his people and kills herself on a pyre; Virgil makes her curse the root of Rome's later wars with Carthage. In legend Dido, a princess from Tyre, won the land by cutting an ox-hide into thin strips. The hill it enclosed was the citadel of Byrsa, where Punic houses can still be seen.

Location precision: Dido's palace is legendary; the pin marks Byrsa hill, the heart of ancient Carthage.

Visitor guidance: The Carthage National Museum sits on Byrsa hill; the TGM suburban railway from Tunis stops nearby.

Landing at Cumae, Aeneas visits the Sibyl, Apollo's prophetess, in her cave, and with her help goes down to the underworld to meet his father's ghost. "Smooth the descent, and easy is the way", she warns; coming back is the hard part. Anchises shows him the souls of future Romans, down to Augustus. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the Italian mainland, founded in the 8th century BC. A long tunnel with a trapezoid section cut into its hill was cleared by Amedeo Maiuri in the 1920s and named the Cave of the Sibyl.

Visitor guidance: The Cumae archaeological park, west of Naples near Pozzuoli, includes the cave and the acropolis temples; Lake Avernus is a few kilometres away.

The Trojans reach the mouth of the Tiber, but a war with the local Latins and Rutulians breaks out. Seeking allies, Aeneas rows upriver to the poor little town of the Greek king Evander, built on a hill that will one day be the heart of Rome. Virgil plays with the contrast: the "shepherds' lowly bow'rs" stand where marble now rises, and cattle graze in what will be the Forum. The Palatine Hill, the oldest part of Rome, later held the houses of the rich and the palaces of the emperors, starting with Augustus.

Visitor guidance: The Palatine is entered on the same ticket as the Roman Forum and the Colosseum.

The Aeneid ends with Aeneas killing his rival Turnus in single combat. The city he will found, named after his Latin bride Lavinia, is only foretold: Jupiter promises him "Lavinian walls" and says his son will move the seat of power to Alba Longa. Roman tradition placed Lavinium on a hill near the coast south of Rome. Its site was never lost, and the walled medieval village of Pratica di Mare stands on it; nearby, archaeologists found a sanctuary with a long row of ancient altars.

Location precision: The poem never shows Lavinium; the pin marks its site at Pratica di Mare.

Visitor guidance: Finds from Lavinium, including its sanctuaries, are shown in the archaeological museum in Pomezia.