As the sun beats overhead and the last of the morning dew burns off the grass, teams of wrestlers begin to flow into the arena: shirtless, oiled and ready to go at it with their comrades.
Musicians, travelling spectators and vendors of all kinds engulf the area around the stadium. You cross an ancient Ottoman stone bridge to reach Sarayiçi, where a new stadium is built around a still visible ancient amphitheater. Once known as Adrianopolis, after the Roman emperor Hadrian, who founded it around A.D.125, it was also the capital of the Ottoman Empire before the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.Īlthough the original Kirkpinar took place in present-day Greece, today it occurs on the island of Sarayiçi, located in the middle of a river. The city of Edirne, located near the Bulgarian and Greek borders in Western Thrace, is way off the beaten tourist track. It stands as one of the best examples of Islamic and Ottoman era architecture. The famous 16th century Selimiye Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011, built on the orders of Sultan Selim II, by master architect Sinan, greeted us as we came to a screeching halt in a cloud of dust. When we arrived in Edirne after a 5 hour bus ride from bustling Istanbul, it was as if we’d stepped back in time.
