Guide
Hıdırlık is the largest of the twenty-four gun forts the Ottoman government built around Edirne after enemy armies had come up through the Balkans towards İstanbul without meeting serious resistance. It was built between 1886 and 1888, and in the Balkan Wars it served as the headquarters of the Edirne defence under Şükrü Pasha.
The complex is more extensive than a single building. It takes in a guardhouse, a barracks block, artillery rooms, gun batteries, a ditch and a courtyard; underground there are eighteen artillery rooms, a 120-metre tunnel and four galleries.
The museum inside was arranged to show two things: what turned up during the restoration of the fort, and material from the period when it was in use. Alongside these are firearms of the Balkan Wars and the early republic — guns, rifles and pistols — together with cannonballs, other equipment of war, and uniforms of the period.
