Thrace (Trakya in Turkish), the historic territory bounded by the rivers Danube and Nestos and the Aegean, Marmara and Black seas, is today divided roughly equally among Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria. In ancient times it was home to warlike tribes, whose bizarre religions and unruly habits presented a continual headache for rulers bent on subduing them. Contemporary life is decidedly less colourful, and until the late 1960s nearly all of Thrace was a military security zone, strictly off-limits to foreigners. Most of the area is now unrestricted, though all the towns remain heavily garrisoned.
The flatter terrain of southern Thrace has long since been denuded of trees, while much of the coast has fallen prey to estates of concrete holiday-homes – seasonal barbecue pads for İstanbul’s workers. Inland is staunchly agricultural and in summer a sea of yellow sunflowers, grown for oil, spreads for miles. Further west, in the wetter lands around Üzünköprü, rice is predominant; to the north, the rolling Istranca hills with their dense forests of oak and conifers hide itinerant charcoal burners and myriad fish-farms raising rainbow trout. Across the whole region opencast mines extract sand and gravel from the prehistoric sea bed that once covered Thrace.
The E80 motorway from İstanbul to the main Thracian town of Edirne runs parallel to the route of the Roman and Byzantine Via Egnatia, which later became the medieval route to the Ottoman holdings in Europe, and is now the D100 highway. Many towns along this road began life as Roman staging posts, a role continued under the Ottomans who endowed all of them with a civic monument or two. Few spots have much to detain you, though keep an eye out for various fine old bridges, which like the road itself may be Ottoman reworkings of Roman or Byzantine originals. The best of these is the quadruple Büyükçekmece span, crossing the neck of an estuary west of İstanbul and built by the great architect Mimar Sinan in 1563.Read More
More than just the quintessential border town, EDIRNE – 230km northwest of İstanbul – is one of the best-preserved Ottoman cities and makes an impressive, easily digestible introduction to Turkey. It’s a lively, attractive place of almost 140,000 people, occupying a rise overlooking the mingling of the Tunca, Arda and Meriç rivers, very near the Greek and Bulgarian frontiers. The life of the place is derived from day-tripping foreign shoppers, discerning tourists and students from the University of Thrace. Downtown, teeming bazaars and elegant domestic architecture vie for attention with a clutch of striking Ottoman monuments. The best of these, crowning the town’s central hillock and sufficient reason alone for a visit, is the Selimiye Camii, masterpiece of the imperial architect Mimar Sinan.
One of Turkey’s finest mosques, the Selimiye Camii was designed by the 80-year-old Mimar Sinan in 1569 at the command of Selim II. The work of a confident craftsman at the height of his powers, it’s visible from some distance away on the Thracian plain.
You can approach the Selimiye across the central park, Dilaver Bey, then through the Kavaflar Arasta (Cobbler’s Arcade), built by Sinan’s pupil Davut and still used as a covered market, full of household goods and cheap clothing; every day, under the market’s prayer dome, the shopkeepers promise to conduct their business honestly. The mosque courtyard, approached from the arasta up a flight of stone steps, is surrounded by a colonnaded portico with arches in alternating red and white stone, ancient columns and domes of varying size above the arcades. Its delicately fashioned şadırvan (ablutions fountain) is the finest in the city. Each of the four identical, slender minarets has three balconies – Sinan’s nod to his predecessors – and, at 71m, are the second tallest in the world after those in Mecca. The detailed carved portal once graced the Ulu Cami in Birgi and was transported here in pieces, then reassembled.
But it is the celestial interior, specifically the dome, which impresses most. Planned expressly to surpass that of Aya Sofya in İstanbul, it manages this – at 31.5m in diameter – by a bare few centimetres, thus achieving Sinan’s lifetime ambition. Held aloft by eight mammoth but surprisingly unobtrusive twelve-sided pillars, the cupola floats 44m above the floor, covered in calligraphy proclaiming the glory of Allah. Immediately below the dome the muezzin’s platform, supported on twelve columns, is an ideal place from which to contemplate the proportions of the mosque. The water of the small marble drinking fountain beneath symbolizes life, under the dome of eternity. The most ornate stone carving is reserved for the mihrab and mimber, backed by fine İznik faïence illuminated by sunlight streaming in through the many windows allowed by the pillar support scheme.
There has always been a settlement of some kind at this strategic point and its military importance has destined it to be captured – and sometimes sacked for good measure – repeatedly over the centuries. Thracian Uscudama became Hellenistic Oresteia, but the city really entered history as Hadrianopolis, designated the capital of Roman Thrace by Emperor Hadrian. Under the Byzantines it retained its significance, not least as a forward base en route to the Balkans – or, more ominously from the Byzantine point of view, first stop on the way to attempts on the imperial capital itself. Unsuccessful besiegers of Constantinople habitually vented their frustration on Hadrianopolis as they retreated, and a handful of emperors met their end here in pitched battles with Thracian “barbarians” of one sort or another.
In 1361 Hadrianopolis surrendered to the besieging Murat I and the provisional Ottoman capital was effectively transferred here from Bursa. A century later, Mehmet the Conqueror trained his troops and tested his artillery here in preparation for the march on Constantinople; indeed the Ottoman court was not completely moved to the Bosphorus until 1458. Because of its excellent opportunities for hunting and falconry, Edirne, as the Turks renamed it, remained a favourite haunt of numerous sultans for three more centuries, earning the title Der-I Saadet or “Gate of Contentment” – during which there were enough victory celebrations, circumcision ceremonies and marriages to rival Constantinople.
Decline set in after a 1751 earthquake, while during each of the Russo-Turkish wars of 1829 and 1878–1879 the city was occupied and pillaged by Tsarist troops. Worse followed, when the Bulgarians (with Serbian aid) besieged Odrin – as they called, and still call, the city – for 143 days from November 3, 1912 before taking it, thus ending the First Balkan War. The Greeks, as one of the victorious World War I Allies, annexed “Adrianópoli” along with the rest of Turkish Thrace from 1920 to 1922 and Turkish sovereignty over the city was only confirmed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Bulgarian, Latin Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches remain, along with elegant houses and a ruined synagogue in the former Jewish quarter, as evidence of the pre-1912, multicultural city which was half Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian and Jewish.
You can tour Edirne’s main sights on foot, but as the Ottoman monuments are widely scattered you’ll need a full day to do it. Many lie to the north and west of town, deliberately rusticated by the early sultans to provide a nucleus for future suburbs. Because of the depopulation suffered by the city since the 1700s, urban growth never caught up with some of them, which have a rather forlorn atmosphere. Still, if the weather’s fine, walking there is a pleasure, especially since you’ll follow the willow-shaded banks of the Tunca River for some distance. Public transport doesn’t serve the more far-flung sites, so your own wheels or a taxi are the other options.
Bearing right at the crossroads in Mecidiye leads, after 6km, to the more mainstream resort of ERİKLİ, the only developed one on the gulf coast. It’s a bit tatty at the inland edges, but the glorious, broad and long (over 1.5km) beach compensates. Only in July and August does it get really busy and, with transport, it makes an excellent first or last stop en route from or to Greece.
If you’ve become a Sinan-ophile, you can visit another of his substantial creations, which dominates the centre of LÜLEBURGAZ, 79km southeast of Edirne on the D100. The Sokollu Mehmet Paşa Külliyesi, originally commissioned by the governor of Rumeli in 1549, wasn’t completed until 1569, during Sokollu’s term as grand vizier. What you see today is an imposing mosque and medrese abutted by a covered bazaar and guarded by two isolated towers. The mosque proper is peculiar, possessing only one minaret; where the others might be, three stubby turret-like towers jut instead. The medrese, still used as a Koranic academy, is arrayed around the mosque courtyard, entered by two tiny arcades on the east and west sides; in the middle of the vast space stands a late Ottoman şadırvan. The mosque’s portico, built to square with the medrese, is far more impressive than the interior, and most visitors will soon drift out of the north gate to the market promenade, whose shops are still intact and in use. Just outside the gate, a huge dome with a stork’s nest on top shades the centre of the bazaar.
Beyond, there was once a massive kervansaray, equal in size to the mosque complex. All of it has vanished save for a lone tower, balanced by another, the Dar-ül-Kura, at the south edge of the entire precinct, beyond the mosque’s mihrab. The former hamam, across the street from the complex, is now chock-a-block with tiny restaurants in its outer bays, though the main dome has collapsed.
KIYIKÖY occupies an idyllic location overlooking the Black Sea, flanked on both sides by slow-moving rivers, full of terrapins and rented canoes, and lushly forested spurs of the Istranca hills. It was fortified by the Byzantines around the sixth century, though most of what is still standing dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Kıyıköy’s pre-1923 Greek population was replaced by Balkan Muslims, but many inhabitants still use the former name, “Midye” – a corruption of Medea – after the locally harvested mussels. Today, gently crumbling half-timbered houses line the backstreets and fishing nets hang everywhere.
The main approach to the walled citadel is via the narrow south gate, sadly restored with pink cement bricks. The west gate opens onto what used to be the town’s agora, now housing a pair of tea gardens and offering superb views to the west. From here a road leads downhill and 300m up the Kazandere River to the impressive Aya Nikola Manastırı – an elaborate structure carved into the rock of the hillside, complete with colonnaded aisles, barrel vaulting and a semicircular apse of tiered seats where the clergy once sat. On the northeast side of the village it’s possible to see the part-brick tunnel, constructed to allow safe passage down to the harbour in time of siege – the only deep-water anchorage on this part of the coast. A fifteen-minute walk west of the village takes you to 2km of pristine sandy beach, backed by low cliffs oozing fossils, though some of the landscape inland is blighted by campers’ rubbish and semi-permanent tents. Several more almost empty beaches – indeed, some of the most beautiful and undeveloped in Turkey – lie east of Kıyıköy, near where the Pabuçdere meets the sea.
With a hilly setting at the head of a gently curving bay, TEKIRDAĞ – the ancient and medieval Rodosto – is a fairly pleasant town, with a few remaining, dilapidated wooden houses, a clutch of museums and a ferry service across the Sea of Marmara.
The town’s best-known attraction – certainly for numbers of visiting Hungarians – is the Rákóczi Museum (Rakoczi Müzesi), easily found by going west along the seafront boulevard from the eski iskele (old jetty) and then uphill inland. Transylvanian Prince Ferenc Rákóczi (1676–1735) was leader of an unsuccessful 1703–11 revolt against the Austrian Habsburgs; in 1719, Sultan Ahmet III granted him asylum – or rather, internal exile – here, away from the political hotbed of the capital. Rákóczi spent the last fifteen years of his life in this seventeenth-century house, now the property of the Hungarian government. Declared a museum in 1932, it was meticulously restored in 1981–82: the interior, especially the elegant top-floor dining/reception room with its lattice ceiling, stained glass and painted cabinets, far outshines the rather thin exhibits comprising paraphernalia of Rákóczi’s insurgent army.
The only other points of mild interest are the Tekirdağ Müzesi at Barbaros Cad 1, a short walk east from the Rákóczi Museum, with archeological finds from the province, and, further downhill, the Namik Kemal Evi (Namik Kemal House), a two-storey wooden house museum honouring the province’s most famous journalist and Young Ottoman (1840–88), though again the building outshines the contents.
Strategically sited at the northern entrance of the Dardanelles, GELIBOLU is a moderately inviting, if often windy, medium-sized town. Founded by the ancient Greeks as Kallipolis, it served as the Anglo-French headquarters during the Crimean War, and still has an important naval base. It’s too far, around 50km, from the Gallipoli battlefields to be a practical base – the days of inebriated Antipodeans stumbling off a bus here, thinking they’d arrived at the World War I sites, are over.
At the heart of town stands a colourful, square fishing harbour, ringed by cafés and restaurants, its two pools separated by a broad stone tower, all that remains of the fortifications of Byzantine Kallipolis. The fortress was held by an army of rebelling Catalan mercenaries for seven years in the early fourteenth century and later fell to the Ottomans (1354), who rebuilt and expanded it. Today, the tower houses the Piri Reis Museum (Piri Reis Müzesi; Fri–Wed 8.30am–noon & 1–5pm; free), dedicated to the legendary sixteenth-century Turkish cartographer, who prepared navigation charts of the Mediterranean and was the first man to accurately map the American coastline. The only other points of interest are a few sturdy but otherwise unremarkable Ottoman tombs, inland from the port and around Hamzakoy, the resort district in the north of town, with its long, coarse-sand beach.
Oil-wrestling (yağlı güreş) is popular throughout Turkey, but reaches the pinnacle of acclaim at the doyenne of tournaments, the annual Kırkpınar festival, staged early each summer on Sarayiçi islet outside Edirne. The preferred date is the first week of July, but the event is moved back into June if it conflicts with Ramadan or either of the two major bayrams following it.
The wrestling matches have been held annually, except in times of war or Edirne’s occupation, for over six centuries. Despite the less than atmospheric environment of the modern stadium that now hosts the wrestling, tradition still permeates the event. The contestants – up to a thousand – dress only in leather knickers called kisbet and are slicked down head-to-toe in diluted olive oil. Wrestlers are classed by height and ability, not by weight, from toddlers up to the pehlivan (full-size) category. Warm-up exercises, the peşrev, are highly stereotyped and accompanied by the davul (deep-toned drum) and zurna (single-reed Islamic oboe). The competitors and the actual matches are solemnly introduced by the cazgır (master of ceremonies), usually a former champion.
The bouts, several of which take place simultaneously, can last anything from a few minutes to nearly an hour, until one competitor collapses or has his back pinned to the grass. Referees keep a lookout for the limited number of illegal moves or holds and victors advance more or less immediately to the next round until only the başpehlivan (champion) remains. Despite the small prize purse donated by the Kırkpınar ağaları – the local worthies who put on the whole show – a champion should derive ample benefit from appearance and endorsement fees, plus the furious on- and off-site betting. Gladiators tend mainly to be villagers from across Turkey who have won regional titles, starry-eyed with the prospect of fame and escape from a rural poverty rut.
In addition to providing the music of the peşrev, the local Romany population descends in force during Kırkpınar, setting up a combination circus-carnival on the outskirts of town. They also observe the ancient pan-Balkan spring festival (Hıdırellez) in the fields around the stadium during the first week of May. The Romany King lights a bonfire on the evening of May 5, a torch relays the flame to other nearby bonfires, and a dish of meat and rice is given to the gathered picnickers. The next morning, young Romany girls are paraded through the streets on horseback around the Muradiye Camii (focus of a Romany mahalle) to the accompaniment of davul and zurna, wearing their own or their mothers’ wedding dresses.