The East Gate is the best preserved of the four gates of Troy VI, the great walled city of around 1300 BC that is the strongest candidate for the Troy of Homer's Iliad. The gate complex consists of a stone-paved entrance ramp climbing through a narrow defended passage with a sharp dog-leg, flanked by two massive square towers. Defenders on the towers could rain missiles down on attackers funnelled through the narrow approach.
The construction is remarkable: the massive ashlar masonry of the towers, the carefully laid paving of the ramp, the system of drainage channels at the threshold. Standing at the foot of the ramp and looking up at the towers, you get a real sense of what an invading Achaean force might have faced — the gate that "wide-streeted Troy" actually defended itself with, on the assumption that some Bronze Age episode is behind Homer's epic. Information panels next to the gate explain the construction sequence and the dating.