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CITY GUIDE / 26 discovery ideas
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Edirne.
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Search this city by topic →Hear the music that treated patients at Bayezid II's hospital
Built in 1488 on the Tunca, the darüşşifa treated mental illness with music, running water and scent five centuries before anyone called it therapy. The domed hall where musicians played to patients is now a health museum, with the makams listed by ailment. Stand in the music room — and photograph it.
Watch the sun set from the Meriç bridge
The 1847 stone bridge over the Meriç is where Edirne goes in the evening: twelve arches, a marble kiosk in the middle, tea gardens on the bank and the sun going down over the water towards Greece. Stand at the kiosk as the light goes — and photograph it.
Tour the Selimiye Mosque
Read inside and out the UNESCO-listed building Mimar Sinan called 'my masterwork.' — and photograph it.
Go to the Kırkpınar Oil Wrestling (June-July)
The world's longest-running (660+ years) sporting event; see the chief wrestler in the Sarayiçi arena — and photograph it.
Walk Ali Paşa bazaar end to end
Sinan built this covered market in 1569 as a single vaulted street three hundred metres long, and it still works as one: brooms, fruit soaps, almond paste and towels on the same stone floor. Walk from one gate to the other — and photograph it.
Visit the Uzunkopru Bridge
Uzunköprü was built to cross the Ergene's broad marshland as well as its river channel. Its arches vary in size and shape to accommodate floods. From a permitted viewing point, compare and photograph two different arches; record why the bridge extends beyond today's riverbed.
Story and sources →Visit Lake Gala National Park
This shallow lake in the Meriç delta sits on a migration route: Dalmatian pelicans, flamingos, and thousands of geese in winter. Go early and use the observation tower. Photograph a flock.
Jump over the Kakava fire on the night of 5 May
Edirne's Roma community welcomes spring with Kakava: a bonfire lit at Sarayiçi on the evening of the fifth, music and dancing around it until it dies down enough to jump, and a dawn wash in the Tunca on the sixth. It is the biggest Hıdırellez in the country. Jump the embers — and photograph it.
See Edirnekari woodwork in Edirne
Edirnekâri is a technique of painting and lacquering wood that developed only here — on chests, on ceilings, on Qur'an lecterns. The patterns are mostly floral, outlined in gold. Get close to one and photograph it.
Eat fried liver (tava ciğer) in Edirne
Liver cut chop-thick and cooked instantly in hot oil; with cacık and cızbız — and photograph it.
Buy marzipan in Edirne
Taste marzipan, a product of Edirne's confectionery tradition, from the historic confectioners — and photograph it.
Tour the Üç Şerefeli and Old Mosque
Examine in turn these two early Ottoman mosques, the preliminary trials for Selimiye — and photograph it.
Step inside the Great Synagogue of Edirne
Built in 1907 after a fire destroyed the city's thirteen small synagogues, it was the largest in the Balkans and held twelve hundred people. Abandoned in 1983 and reopened in 2015 after restoration, its cream-and-gold interior is empty most days. Stand under the central dome — and photograph it.
Swim in the Gulf of Saros at Erikli
Saros is the cleanest stretch of sea within reach of Istanbul, protected and cold, and Erikli is the beach where Edirne and Keşan spend their summer: fine sand, water clear enough to see your feet in chest depth, and pine forest behind. Swim out — and photograph it.
Find what is left of the Edirne palace at Sarayiçi
Before Topkapı, the sultans ruled from here: a palace of hundreds of rooms on the island between two arms of the Tunca, blown up in 1877 when the retreating army fired the powder store. The Justice Kiosk, a kitchen block and a bath survive among the trees. Find the Adalet Kasrı tower — and photograph it.
Buy a fruit soap and a hand-tied broom in the arasta
Two crafts the city kept: soaps moulded and painted into peaches, quinces and bunches of grapes, once given at weddings, and brooms bound by hand from broomcorn with coloured thread. Both are sold in the arasta under the Selimiye. Pick one of each — and photograph it.
Taste Edirne white cheese at a market counter
Edirne's beyaz peynir is made from the milk of the Meriç plain and aged in brine in tins, and it has a registered name because it is saltier and firmer than the Aegean kind. The cheese shops around the bazaar will cut you a taste before you buy. Try two ages side by side — and photograph it.
Cross the river to Karaağaç and its stranded station
Karaağaç is the last piece of Turkey west of the Meriç, given back at Lausanne in 1923 to pay for war damage, and its grand 1914 railway station lost its railway when the line was rerouted through Greece. The building is now the university's rectorate, with the Lausanne monument in front. Walk over from the city — and photograph it.
Taste deva-i misk helvası, the halva that was once a medicine
Made with forty-one spices, musk among them, this Edirne halva started as a palace remedy and is still sold in the same small tins by a handful of shops. It is dark, dense and tastes of nothing else you know. Buy a tin — and photograph it.
Climb the walls of Enez castle where the Meriç meets the sea
Ancient Ainos stood at the river mouth and traded upstream into Thrace; the Byzantine and Genoese castle on its hill keeps a ruined Hagia Sophia church inside the walls and looks over the delta lagoons to the Aegean. Walk the ramparts — and photograph it.
See all four minarets of the Selimiye from Hıdırlık Tabyası
The bastion on the hill east of the city held out through the 1913 siege and is now a memorial park. From its rampart the whole of Edirne lies below, the Selimiye standing clear of everything else. Go up before sunset — and photograph it.
Camp in the pines above Saros at Gökçetepe
Gökçetepe nature park is a pine forest on the cliffs of the gulf, with tent pitches under the trees and steps down to a shingle cove. The view along the Saros coast towards Gelibolu is the reason people book months ahead in summer. Pitch a tent at the edge — and photograph it.
Find the Bulgarian church of Sveti Georgi
Built in 1880 for the city's Bulgarian community and restored in 2004, St George is still a working Orthodox church with a painted iconostasis and a bell tower over the Kıyık quarter. Services are rare; the door is usually open. Step inside — and photograph it.
Stop at Sinan's roadside complex in Havsa
Sokollu Mehmed Paşa had Sinan build a mosque, a caravanserai, a bath and a bridge here in 1577 for travellers on the Istanbul-Edirne road, and the road still passes it. The mosque's courtyard and the arcaded market survive. Stand in the courtyard — and photograph it.
Watch the rice harvest on the Meriç plain at İpsala
Half of Turkey's rice grows on this flat floodplain along the Greek border, and in autumn the paddies are drained and cut by combines running to the horizon. İpsala rice is what most of the country cooks. Stand at the edge of a paddy during the harvest — and photograph it.
Find a dolmen in the fields of Lalapaşa
The hills along the Bulgarian border hold Turkey's only dolmens: stone-slab burial chambers from around 1000 BC, dozens of them scattered near the villages of Hacıdanişment and Vaysal, most with no sign and no fence. Ask in the village for the way — and photograph it.
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