Did the Trojans found London?

Medieval England believed in a somewhat strange origin story: that London was once called 'Troynovant' or 'New Troy', and that the English were the direct descendants of Aeneas, one of the many heroes of the Trojan War.

This legend first appears in the Historia Brittonum, an anonymous 9th-century historical compilation to which commentary was added by Nennius. It is best known from the account given by the 12th-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae.

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that Brutus was the name of the founder and first King of Britain. According to the legend (he wrote), Brutus was the great-grandson of Aeneas who traveled to Greece and met a group of Trojan refugees who had been enslaved by the Greeks. Brutus became their leader and forced the Greek king to set them free.

Brutus and his Trojan refugees then travel west, through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the great unknown. They hear, probably from Punic tin traders on their way to Tintagel, about the fabled island of Albion, where giants live. King Brutus defeated these giants on Albion and build a city along the River Thames, which he named 'Troia Nova' (New Troy), a name which was gradually corrupted to 'Trinovantum'.

Modern historians reject this story as myth rather than history, because archaeological evidence shows that London developed from the Roman settlement of Londinium, founded around AD 43 during the invasion of Britain under Claudius. Excavations have revealed continuous Roman urban development but not a shred of evidence of a Bronze Age Trojan colony.

Instead, the name Trinovantum appears to derive from the Celtic tribe known as the Trinovantes, who inhabited southeast Britain before the Roman conquest. They are even mentioned by Julius Caesar in his 'Commentarii de Bello Gallico', which is the account of his expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC. In a later account of those expeditions by the historian Orosius, these people are referred to as civitas Trinovantum, meaning 'the nation (or city) of the Trinovantes'.

The Roman name Londinium likely derives from a pre-Roman (probably Celtic) root, supported by linguistic continuity with Welsh Llundain.

The Trojan origin myth reflects a broader medieval effort to connect Britain to classical antiquity, which eventually culminated with the obsession of Victorian England in all things classical.

To complicate the situation even further, Romans themselves claimed descent from Troy through Aeneas, as described in the Aeneid by Virgil. Medieval authors imitated this tradition hoping to give Britain a prestigious origin comparable to Rome.

Additionally, the Trojans were not strictly 'Greeks'. Evidence suggests they were likely Anatolian-speaking peoples influenced by Mycenaean Greek culture[1]. Which means that the myth was even wrong in the sense that the supposed founder of London wasn't a Greek, but more likely someone we would now call a Turk.

So, London wasn't founded by exiled Trojans. But it does beg the question where the Trojans really did go after their defeat at the hands of the coalition of Greeks.

Trojans would have done what everybody would do if they have lost everything: Survivors either remained in Anatolia or were absorbed into surrounding populations[2].

A perfect example of this is the fairly recent genocide, expulsion, and erasure of Greeks in Smyna (now Izmir) by the Turks in 1912. They called it the He Megali Katastrophe ('The Great Catastrophe'). Survivors of that massacre mostly went to their family members in Greece.

[1] Joachim Latacz: Troy and Homer - 2004.
[2] Renée Hirschon, Renée. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe - 1989.