Twelve cut-stone arches carry the Meriç Köprüsü, also known as the Mecidiye Köprüsü, 261 m across the Meriç river at Edirne. The bridge is 7 m wide, and eleven round-arched relief openings are set into its piers. The bridge was built between 1842 and 1847 under Sultan Abdülmecit, by an architect whose name is not known, it is the latest of Edirne's bridges and the city's last Ottoman stone bridge.
A wooden bridge stood here first. On a visit to Edirne, Sultan Mahmut II decided to rebuild it in masonry, but work begun in 1833 stopped for lack of money and with his death, and his son Abdülmecit completed the job. Two inscriptions marked the story: a repair inscription by Pertev Paşa from Mahmut's reign, and a rebuilding inscription in the talik hand of the poet Ziver Bey. The second was destroyed during the occupation of Edirne and replaced in 1966 by a faithful copy by the calligrapher Mustafa Uğur.
At the middle of the bridge a marble viewing balcony faces a marble inscription kiosk, its vault resting on round arches over four marble piers. The quays of cut stone on both banks recall that the Meriç was a waterway down to the Aegean until the 19th century; in the sixteenth century the landing at İskelebaşı, beside the bridge site, was linked to the port of Enez, and grain, fruit and goods from İzmir and the Aegean islands came upriver in small boats.
The carved figures on the piers are what make the bridge stand out. On the second pier from the Edirne side, above the first relief opening, two serpent-like dragons face each other on an arch 48 cm thick, their twisted bodies wrapped round it like a heavy rope. These dragons are familiar from Seljuk buildings but rare on bridges. The same pier has a crescent and six-pointed star carved on a square stone about 30x30 cm, and the third pier carries three rows of stone bird perches, another feature seldom found on a bridge.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Edirne as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2.8 °C in January to 24.8 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (71 mm) and lightest in August (23 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
