The Route

In my attempt to replicate Odysseus’ journey in the Iliad and the Odyssey, I will chart the following path via solo travel:

  • Istanbul, Turkey

  • Canakkale, Turkey (modern-day Troy)

  • Gozo, Malta (Calypso’s island)

  • Trapani, Sicily, Italy (Land of the Laestrygonians)

  • Erice, Sicily, Italy (Land of the Cyclops: Polyphemus)

  • Catania/Taormina, Sicily, Italy (Island of Helios; Scylla and Charybdis, by view)

  • Lixouri, Kefalonia, Greece (modern-day Ithaca)

  • Athens, Greece

Over the course of my initial exploration, I could not find much guidance in planning how to solo travel this path. So in terms of logistics, I worked from scratch but in identifying and researching modern-day locations, I drew inspiration heavily from a host of sources including but not limited to the Alumnae Association of Smith College, the work of the University of Pennsylvania’s Classics Department (originally via Van Der Heyden and Scullard (1959)), Robert Bittlestone’s book Odysseus Unbound (2005) and the associated work at large of the Odysseus Unbound Foundation, and from my own studies and readings of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Please note, in any cases where my path diverges from those sources or other academic works, that this trip is mostly a fun and interesting way of pursuing solo travel through the Mediterranean and does not claim necessarily to be a scholarly trip or academic research expedition. Yet as I understand it, the locations I’ve selected have a significant amount of support and evidence as to their historical accuracy.

To that point, factors that constrain my inclusion of other important parts of the mythology (i.e. Circe, the Lotus-Eaters, etc.) are limited length of vacation time, limited personal budget and finances, and/or travel logistics. The exclusion of those two in particular is because they are further away from the other locations I intend to visit. Importantly, I am not necessarily traveling in the same order as Odysseus did. Rather, I have done my best to chart a path that balances my intellectual aims here alongside trying to include most of the important locations in a logically unidirectional way within a condensed timeframe.