Understanding the Dardanelles helps move beyond the tale: Troy controls a threshold, and therefore a world of exchanges and tensions.
The strait links the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and opens toward the Black Sea. Even when one remains cautious about the relation between poem and history, that position gives Troy concrete weight: it stands near a passage, and therefore near a stake of circulation.
In the story, this changes how the war can be read. Troy is not only a beautiful city besieged over a love affair. It occupies a point where prestige, routes, alliances and symbolic control may intersect.
Two planes must therefore be held together: myth tells of heroes and gods; geography reminds us that stories often attach themselves to strategic places.