A contribution to the topography of 19th century Adrianople

Abstract

A new period opened for the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire
since the second third of the 19th century. New national states were gradually
formed and the territory of European Turkey was reduced considerably.
The ‘westernization’ which took place modified profoundly the existing
urban hierarchies. Major development occurred in cities along new railway
lines and in the coast, while traditional inland cities, especially the ones
located near the newly traced frontier lines, declined rapidly.
Until then Adrianople had been the most important city of European
Turkey, the administration and trade centre of an extended hinterland and
had lived in peace since its capture by the Turks, almost five centuries before.
Although there is rich bibliography about the important monuments
of Ottoman architecture which made the city famous, on the contrary very
little is known of the urban space of Adrianople in general and more specifically
of the intra muros city, which perished in a fire in 1905; and almost
nothing is known of the everyday places where the various ethnic-religious
groups lived and worked.
In 1854-56, during the Crimean War, the French chef d’escadron Osmont
prepared a detailed plan of the city. This beautiful manuscript, with an index 

of 200 buildings in a 1:10.000 scale, is a valuable document for the topography
of Adrianople in the middle of the 19th century. The Roman-Byzantine
walled city and its very regular street system (orthogonal grid) appear clearly
despite the distortions that have happened during long centuries of continuous
urban life. Written almost at the same time, a report by the Greek consul in
1858 is an important source of information about the buildings and the urban
structure of Adrianople.
With the help of these documents as well as of other sources, this article
will trace the stages of urban development as well as the city’s evolution
after the middle of the 19th century, when an era of major development,
demographic and other, came to end.