Edirne
The land to the north of the Aegean Sea was called Thrace by the Romans. Today this ancient Roman province is divided among Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, with Turkey holding the easternmost part. Turkish Thrace (Trakya) is not large, or particularly exciting, except for its major city, Edirne.
Edirne is the first town you come to if you’re traveling overland from Europe to Turkey, it’s a way-station on the road to Istanbul. It wouldn’t be surprising if this had been Edirne’s role throughout the history, even in the old days when the town was called Adrianople. But there’s more to Edirne than this. Because of its history, it holds several of the finest examples, from the greatest periods, of Turkish mosque architecture, and if you have the chance, you should take time for a visit.
If you’re coming from Istanbul, you can make the trip to Edirne and back to Istanbul in a day, though a longish one. Get an early morning bus, plan to have lunch and see the sights, and catch a return bus in the late afternoon (225 km away - 3 hrs by bus).
Edirne was indeed built as a defense post for the larger city on the Bosphorus. The Roman Emperor Hadrian founded it in the 2nd century as Hadrianopolis, a name which was later shortened by Europeans to Adrianople, then again by the Turks to Edirne. The Ottoman Empire grew from the seed of a Turkish emirate in north- western Anatolia. By the mid-1300s, the emirate of the Ottomans with its capital at Bursa had become very powerful, but not powerful enough to threaten the mighty walls of Istanbul. Bent on more conquest, the Ottoman armies crossed the Dardanelles into Thrace, skirting the great capital. Capturing Adrianople in 1363, they made it their new capital and base of operations for military campaigns in Europe.
For almost a hundred years, this was the city from which the Ottoman sultan would set out on his campaigns to Europe and Asia. When the time was finally ripe for the final conquest of the Byzantine Empire, Mehmet the Conqueror set out from Edirne on the road to Istanbul. Even after the great city was captured, Edirne played an important role in Ottoman life and society, for it was still a forward post on the route to conquest in Europe.
When the Ottoman Empire fell apart after World War I, the Allies had decided to grant all of Thrace to the Greek Kingdom. Istanbul was to become an international city. In the summer of 1920, Greek armies occupied Edirne. But Ataturk’s republican armies were ultimately victorious and the Treaty of Lausanne left Edirne and Eastern Thrace to the Turks and Edirne returned to its role as ‘the town on the way to Istanbul’.
The famous Selimiye Mosque, the finest work of the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, is a must see in Edirne. Though smaller than Sinan’s tremendous Suleymaniye in Istanbul, the Selimiye is wonderfully harmonious and elegant. Crowning its small hill, it can be seen from a good distance across the rolling Thracian steppeland and makes an impressive sight.
The Selimiye was constructed for Sultan Selim II (1566-1574), and finished just after the Sultan’s death. Sinan’s genius guided him in designing a broad and lofty dome and supporting it by means of pillars, arches and external buttresses. He did it so well that the interior is very spacious, and the walls can be filled with windows because they don’t have to bear all of the weight. The result is a wide, airy, light space for prayer, similar to that of the Suleymaniye. Part of the Selimiye’s excellent effect comes from its four slender, very tall (71 meters) minarets. The fluted drums of the minarets add to the sense of height. You’ll notice that each is built with three balconies.