Its ruins lie near modern Boğazkale, Turkey (originally Boğazköy) within the great loop of the Kızılırmak River (Hittite: Marashantiya; Greek: Halys).

Toward the end of the 3rd Millennium BC the Hattian people established a settlement on locations that had been occupied even earlier and referred to the site as Hattush.

[2] In the 19th and 18th centuries BC, merchants from Assyria, centered at Kanesh (Neša) (modern Kültepe) established a trading post there, setting up in their own separate quarter of the lower city.

Under Muwatalli II, they moved south to Tarhuntassa but the king assigned his younger brother, the future Hattusili III as governor over Hattusa.

[10] At its peak, the city covered 1.8 km2 (440 acres) and comprised an inner and outer portion, both surrounded by a massive and still visible course of walls erected during the reign of Suppiluliuma I (c. 1344–1322 BC (short chronology)).

In 1833, the French archaeologist Félix Marie Charles Texier (1802–1871) was sent on an exploratory mission to Turkey, where in 1834 he discovered monumental ruins near the town of Boğazköy.

Ernest Chantre opened some trial trenches at the village then called Boğazköy, in 1893–94, with excavations being cut short by a cholera outbreak.

In 1905 Hugo Winckler conducted some soundings at Boğazköy on behalf of the German Oriental Society (DOG), finding 35 more cuneiform tablet fragments at the site of the royal fortress, Büyükkale.

[25] Winckler returned in 1907 (with Otto Puchstein, Heinrich Kohl, Ludwig Curtius and Daniel Krencker), and briefly in 1911 and 1912 (with Theodore Makridi).

[31][32] In 1994 Jürgen Seeher assumed control of the excavation, leading there until 2005, with the focus on the Büyükkaya and non-monumental areas including economic and residential spaces.

[34][35][36] During the 1986 excavations a large (35 × 24 cm, 5 kg in weight, with 2 attached chains) inscribed metal tablet was discovered 35 meters west of the Sphinx Gate.

[39][40] Another significant find during the 1990-91 excavation season in the "Westbau" building of the upper city, was 3400 sealed bullae and clay lumps dating from the 2nd half of the 13th century BC.

One particularly important tablet, currently on display at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, details the terms of a peace settlement reached years after the Battle of Kadesh between the Hittites and the Egyptians under Ramesses II, in 1259 or 1258 BC.

[45] Although the 30,000 or so clay tablets recovered from Hattusa form the main corpus of Hittite literature, archives have since appeared at other centers in Anatolia, such as Tabigga (Maşat Höyük) and Sapinuwa (Ortaköy).