The Thracian settlement of Uskadama was already old when Roman Emperor Hadrian rebuilt it in 125 AD and, with no false modesty, named it Hadrianopolis. Sitting astride a major trade route in fertile country, it was always going to be fought over - sixteen major battles and sieges over its 1,900-year history, most spent under the Byzantines or the Ottomans. When Sultan Murad I took Thrace in 1369, he made Adrianople (which he and his subjects pronounced Edirne) his capital, and for nearly a century it ran an empire that stretched from the Danube to Anatolia. Then, in 1453, Mehmed II breached the walls of Constantinople, and the capital moved. Edirne kept its imperial palace, its hunting grounds, and its reputation as a summer retreat - but the center of gravity had shifted south.

If you visit one building in Edirne, visit the Selimiye Mosque. The Ottoman court architect Mimar Sinan was eighty when he completed it in 1574, having already given Istanbul the Süleymaniye and dozens of others. Selimiye was the one he wanted to be remembered by. The dome is over thirty-one meters across, slightly larger than that of Hagia Sophia - a comparison Sinan made openly, with pride, and won. Four corner minarets rise more than seventy meters, each carved with three internal staircases so three muezzins can climb without crossing paths. Stand under the dome and the space feels weightlessly enormous. Sinan was an ethnic Greek devshirme conscript who became the most prolific architect in Ottoman history. The Selimiye is what he wanted to leave.

The Tundzha and the Maritsa wind around Edirne in long lazy curves, joining south of the city before flowing on to form the Greek border. Where the rivers and their floodplains had to be crossed, the Ottomans built bridges - long, low, multi-arched stone causeways that still carry traffic today. Walk south from downtown along Lozan Caddesi (named for the Treaty of Lausanne) and you cross two of them in a few hundred meters: the first over the Tundzha, the second a longer span over the Maritsa with a lookout midway. On the far bank lies Karaağaç, the only piece of Turkey west of the Maritsa, a quiet grid of nineteenth-century mansions. North of the city, the medieval bridges to Sarayiçi cross fields where the imperial palace once stood, mostly washed away by floods and time. Today only scraps remain. The bridges outlasted what they were built to serve.

Once a year, on a river island just north of town, men strip down to leather breeches called kispet, slick themselves head to toe in olive oil, and try to throw each other to the ground. The Kırkpınar oil-wrestling festival has run at this site since 1360, making it one of the oldest continuously held sporting competitions in the world - though the tradition itself, on the evidence of Mesopotamian carvings, goes back to 2650 BC. Bouts last up to forty minutes. The olive oil makes grappling almost impossible, which is the point: wrestlers must rely on technique and stamina rather than brute holds. The champion is named Başpehlivan, head wrestler, and carries the title for a year. It is the national sport of Turkey, and Edirne is the place to see it.

The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 redrew Turkey's borders just west of Edirne, severing it from much of its hinterland and leaving it stranded against a not-very-friendly frontier. Turkey was neutral in the Second World War, but Nazi flags flew across the river over Axis Bulgaria and occupied Greece, and much of the city was evacuated. Those who could not flee suffered cold and hunger. After the war, industrial growth bypassed Edirne in favor of other cities, and the population only crept back up - 185,408 by 2019. The local food evolved from this slow, modest life. Edirne ciğer is the city's signature dish - whole pieces of liver dusted in flour, fried fast in vegetable oil, served with crunchy chili pepper, bread, and ayran to put out the fire. The little shops that specialize in it cluster near the Old Mosque, in a park where pensioners watch you eat. It is one of the small pleasures of arriving here instead of driving past.