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CITY GUIDE / 20 discovery ideas
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Kırklareli.
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Search this city by topic →Find the rock-cut monastery at Kıyıköy
Aya Nikola's rock galleries once had a wooden entrance, added in the 19th century and now gone. The rock-cut church and lower sacred spring reveal different levels of the complex. From an open visitor area, photograph the rock façade and note the vanished wooden entrance in your memory.
Story and sources →Enter the Dupnisa cave system
Three caves connected end to end under the Istranca forest, with a stream running through the lowest one — you hear it before you see it. Thousands of bats winter here, which is why part of the year it is closed. Photograph the stream inside.
Drink hardaliye in Thrace
Grape juice is layered with crushed mustard seed and cherry leaves and left to stand — the mustard stops it fermenting, so it stays a soft drink. It is made nowhere else in Turkey. Photograph a glass.
Eat what the Kıyıköy boats brought in
Kıyıköy sits on a bluff between two rivers with its Byzantine walls still around it, and the fishing harbour below is where the village eats: turbot in spring, bonito and bluefish in autumn, served on plastic tables a few metres from the boats. Order the fish of the day — and photograph it.
Wander the İğneada Longoz Forests
Walk on the boardwalk through one of Europe's best-preserved longoz (flooded) forests — and photograph it.
Walk the old Yayla quarter of Kırklareli
Above the centre the Yayla mahallesi keeps the town as it was when Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks shared it: stone houses with wooden upper floors, cobbled lanes, a mosque and a church a few streets apart. Most of it has been restored rather than replaced. Walk the lanes — and photograph it.
Take a boat up the Pabuçdere into the forest
South of Kıyıköy the Pabuçdere runs into the sea through a wooded gorge, and small boats from the beach take you upstream between banks of oak and beech until the river gets too shallow. Herons, turtles and total quiet. Go as far as the boat will — and photograph it.
Walk the boardwalk to Mert Lake at dawn
Behind İğneada's beach the floodplain forest opens onto Mert Lake, a lagoon separated from the Black Sea by a bar of dunes. A wooden walkway crosses the reeds to the water, and at first light the herons, cormorants and, in winter, pelicans are all there. Reach the end of the boardwalk — and photograph it.
Walk through Sinan's arcaded market in Lüleburgaz
The Sokollu complex of 1571 is the reason the town exists: mosque, medrese, bath, caravanserai and a covered market street with a domed crossroads in the middle, all by Sinan, all built so travellers on the Balkan road would stop and spend. The market still trades. Stand under the crossroads dome — and photograph it.
Eat Kırklareli kıvırcık lamb where the breed is from
The kıvırcık is a small curly-fleeced sheep raised on the Istranca pastures, and its meat is registered under the province's name because the grazing gives it a taste nothing from a feedlot has. Roasted slowly, it is what the town serves at a proper dinner. Order it at a local restaurant — and photograph it.
Bathe in the 1383 Hızırbey hammam
The oldest Ottoman building in Kırklareli is still doing its job: a double bath built by Hızır Bey in 1383 beside his mosque, and open to the public six centuries later. Marble, steam and a scrub — and photograph the domed entrance.
Sit in the only ancient theatre in Thrace at Vize
Vize was Bizye, capital of the Thracian kings and later a Roman city, and its small theatre on the hillside is the only one in the Turkish part of Thrace. The seats have been uncovered and the stage wall re-erected. Sit in the top row — and photograph it.
Stand in a reconstructed Neolithic house at Aşağıpınar
On the edge of town, Aşağıpınar is an 8,000-year-old farming settlement excavated for decades and rebuilt as an open-air museum: wattle houses, hearths and the layers that link Anatolia to the first farmers of Europe. Step into a house — and photograph it.
Find the Byzantine church that became Vize's mosque
The Gazi Süleyman Paşa mosque started as a domed Byzantine church, probably of the ninth century, and its brick vaults and marble columns are still there under the mihrab. Locals call it Küçük Ayasofya. Look up at the dome — and photograph it.
Stand in the foundry that cast Mehmed II's cannonballs
Demirköy means iron village, and the reason is the Fatih foundry in the forest outside it: an ironworks that by tradition cast shot for the siege of Constantinople and ran on Istranca ore and charcoal for four centuries. The furnaces and workshops have been excavated and roofed. Walk the foundry floor — and photograph it.
Cross the 1633 bridge and find Sinan's mosque in Babaeski
Two stops on the old imperial road: the six-arched stone bridge over the Şeytandere, built in 1633 with a marble inscription kiosk in the middle, and a few streets away the Cedid Ali Paşa mosque of 1555, one of Sinan's single-domed designs. Walk from one to the other — and photograph it.
Drink from the spring that gives Kaynarca its name
Kaynarca means "the boiling one", and the spring at the centre of this village bubbles up cold and hard enough to fill a stream on the spot, shaded by plane trees and ringed with picnic tables. The whole district comes here on summer weekends. Fill a bottle at the source — and photograph it.
Climb to the Byzantine castle above Pınarhisar
The town takes its name from the castle: a Byzantine fort on the rock above the springs, later held by the Ottomans, with a stretch of wall and a tower still standing over the rooftops. The climb is short and the plain opens out below. Reach the tower — and photograph it.
Stand at Turkey's north-western corner at Beğendik
Past İğneada the road ends at Beğendik, the last village before Bulgaria, where the Rezve stream marks the border and the Black Sea closes the corner. It is the most north-westerly point of the country, and almost nobody goes. Stand on the beach with the border behind you — and photograph it.
Hike the oak forest of the Istranca above Kofçaz
Kofçaz is the smallest district in the country and almost all of it is forest: the Istranca (Yıldız) mountains rolling to the Bulgarian line in oak and beech, with villages of a few dozen houses in the clearings. Follow a forest track out of the town for an hour — and photograph it.
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