It was located at the Thracian Chersonese peninsula on the European coast of the Hellespont, opposite the ancient city of Abydos, and near the town of Eceabat in Turkey.

[4] In c. 512, Sestos was occupied by the Achaemenid Empire,[5] and Darius I ferried across from the city to Asia Minor after his Scythian campaign.

[1] The city served as a base for the Athenian fleet until it was occupied by Spartan forces led by Lysander in 404, during the Peloponnesian War.

[10] During the Corinthian War, Sestos was occupied by Athenian forces led by Conon in 393, and the city came under the control of Ariobarzanes, Satrap of Phrygia.

[5] After the death of Alexander the Great in 323, the city, alongside other Macedonian dependencies in Thrace, was allocated to Lysimachus as a result of the Partition of Babylon.

[19] By the end of the Hellenistic period, the offices of gymnasiarch and of ephebarch, with responsibility for the neoi (young) and epheboi (adolescents), are attested at Sestos.

[20][21] Upon the death of Attalus III, King of Pergamon, in 133 BC, Sestos was annexed to the Roman Republic after Aristonicus, a pretender to the throne, had been defeated.

[24] It is believed that Sestos, with Abydos and Lampsacus, is referred to as one of the "three large capital cities" of the Roman Empire in Weilüe, a 3rd-century AD Chinese text.

[31] The fortress on the site of Sestos was later named Choiridokastron (pig castle), and was captured by Ottoman Turks led by Süleyman Pasha in 1355.