Destinations of myth and legend (part 2)
We’re continuing our look at some of the destinations of myth and legend that our planet has in store for the avid globetrotter, starting in France.
France – Ys
The city of Ys is said to have been built for the Celtic Pricness Dahut by her father. She wanted a city by the sea and he built a dyke around it to protect it from the high waves, and the key to the brass gate was in his possession at all times. Dahut took advantage of the new city by choosing a different lover every night and having him killed afterward, till a demon outwitted her to steal the key and open the gate thus flooding Ys.
Obviously that’s a legend, a pretty fun and interesting one, but the old city does lie beneath the bay at Dournenez which is now a very popular beach town in Brittany, so all clouds have a silver lining.
Turkey – Troy
Thought for many centuries to be the stuff of actual myth, archaeologists have pretty much come to the conclusion that they’ve found the city of Troy, the exact stomping grounds of characters like Hector, Paris and Helen. We can only go by the somewhat fictional retelling of the Trojan War as to what and why things happened, but things definitely happened here and nowadays modern-day visitors can visit the walls, temples and ruins of what is now known as Truva.
Mongolia – Karakorum
This is the place where none other than Genghis Khan set up some appropriate digs for himself in the mid-13th century and then he went on to conquer most of the known world. Karakorum became the capital of the Mongol Empire but since that particular empire died with its Khan, so did the capital’s glory days. The city was then destroyed and current visitors will have to use a certain degree of imagination to envisage what it would’ve been in its hay-day, it’s still an interesting destination worth of this list.
