A tale of two cities
Iznik and Edirne boast rustic attractions as well as remnants of Ottoman glory, writes Nick Danforth
IF you like former capital cities of the Ottoman Empire, you’ve probably been to Istanbul. Perhaps when you were there, though, you didn’t realise that there were several others that you could visit. I recently had a chance to go back to two of my favourites, Iznik and Edirne. Both can be reached in a few hours from Istanbul, though it took the Ottoman armies more than a century to make the trip. Better yet, while they offer much of the same spectacular architecture as Istanbul, both have a sleepy, ramshackle quality that I’ve always imagined to be the defining feature of all of the 19th-century Balkan and Anatolian towns I’ve never visited.
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