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EDIRNE |
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EDIRNE , a former Ottoman capital, boasts an impressive number of
elegant monuments and makes for an easily digestible introduction to
Turkey, on the borders with both Greece and Bulgaria. It's a lively city,
albeit somewhat seedy thanks to vast numbers of truck drivers and
assorted East European traders who pass through.
The main sights of Edirne are best seen on foot; allow a full day as
there are myriad lesser monuments and old houses well worthy of a detour.
The best starting point is the Eski Camii bang in the centre, the oldest
mosque in town and a boxy structure begun in 1403 that is a more
elaborate version of Bursa's Ulu Camii. Recently completed restoration
work has revealed the splendour of the calligraphy for which the mosque
is justly famous. Just across the way, the Bedesten was Edirne's first
covered market, though the plastic goods it now touts are no match for
the building. Nearby, the Semiz Ali Pasa Çarsisi is the other main
bazaar, begun by Sinan in 1568 at the behest of Semiz Ali, one of the
most able of the Ottoman grand viziers. A short way north of here is the
bizarrely beautiful Üç Serefeli Camii , dating from 1447; its name means
"three-balconied", derived from the presence of three galleries for the
muezzin on the tallest of the four idiosyncratic minarets . Restoration
work on the medrese is expected to be completed by mid-2002. A little
way west, the masterly Selimiye Camii was designed by the eighty-year-old
Sinan in 1569 at the command of Selim II. Its four slender minarets also
have three balconies, and at 71m are among the tallest in the world; the
interior is most impressive, its dome planned to surpass that of Aya
Sofya in Istanbul - which, at 31.5m in diameter, it manages by a few
centimetres. Next door, the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Tues-Sun
9am-1pm & 2.30-6.30pm; $1) houses assorted wooden, ceramic and martial
knick-knacks from the province, plus a portrait gallery of champions of
oiled-wrestling (a speciality of Edirne). The main Archeological Museum
(Tues-Sun 9am-noon & 2.30-6.30pm; $1), just east of the mosque, contains
an assortment of Greco-Roman fragments, some Neolithic finds and an
ethnographic section that focuses on local crafts. Ten minutes further
on, down the slope and up Mimar Sinan Caddesi, the Muradiye Camii was
built as a sanctuary for Mevlevi dervishes by Murat II in 1435, its
interior distinguished by some of the best Iznik tiles outside Bursa.
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