Qualla: Uzunköprü Bridge

Uzunköprü Bridge: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0. It took seventeen years to build, from roughly 1426 to 1443, and when the masons finally laid the last stone the bridge stretched 1,392 meters across the marshy floodplain of the Ergene river. One hundred and seventy-four arches in a long parade, the longest stone bridge anyone had ever attempted. Sultan Murad II had ordered it because his armies kept getting stuck. Wooden bridges across the Ergene rotted, washed away, or burned down. Floods would isolate troops on the wrong side of the river for days. So the sultan said: build me one made of stone, and build it long enough that the spring floods cannot overwhelm it. The masons obliged. Almost six centuries later, traffic still crosses it, though by 2021 it had to be closed for restoration after cracks began appearing in stones placed there before Columbus sailed.

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Image: Dosseman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uzunköprü Bridge: Why a Bridge Here

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CeeGee, CC BY-SA 4.0. The land around the Ergene was nobody's idea of a good place to live. Swampy, choked with thorny vegetation that hid bandits and wolves, given to seasonal flooding that turned firm ground into impassable mire, it had stayed empty while people built villages on the higher hills ne...

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Image: CeeGee | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uzunköprü Bridge: The Numbers

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0. There are still arguments about the exact length. Different surveys have given different answers as the river has shifted, as some arches buried themselves in silt, and as restorations have changed the structure. In 1978, surveyors measured 1,266 meters. In 1989, they got 1,254. ...

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Image: Dosseman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Uzunköprü Bridge: Centuries of Patches

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aleksa Aleksi, CC0. Earthquakes shook some arches loose. Floods undermined others. Over the centuries the bridge was patched and shortened and raised and patched again. In 1971, in an attempt at modernization that locals would later regret, the entire deck was widened to 6.8 meters and paved with st...

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Image: Aleksa Aleksi | CC0

Uzunköprü Bridge: What's Underneath

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the 2021 restoration began, one of its goals was to dig out arches that had sunk into the riverbed and silted over, returning the bridge closer to its original profile. Workers also planned to pull up the asphalt and replace it with stone, and to replace any blocks that had ...

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Image: Dosseman | CC BY-SA 4.0