Adana Stone Bridge

The Taşköprü is generally dated to the second century CE, built under Hadrian or thereabouts, and it carried the Roman road across the Seyhan into Adana. Of its original arches - accounts vary between twenty-one and more - fourteen remain, in cut stone, repaired repeatedly across the Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods and again in modern times. It carried motor traffic until the 2000s, which makes it one of the oldest bridges anywhere to have been used by cars; it is now pedestrianised and lit at night, with the river walk and parks along both banks. Next to it stands the Sabancı Central Mosque with its six minarets, so the two sit together in every photograph of the city. Adana is not a tourist city and the bridge takes half an hour, but it is worth standing on: a working piece of Roman infrastructure that outlasted every empire that repaired it.

Highlights

• The fourteen arches - the surviving Roman spans in cut stone.
• The repair layers - Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman work in the stone.
• The river walk - the parks along both banks of the Seyhan.
• The mosque behind - the six minarets in the same view.

When to go

April to May and October to November - Adana in summer is among the hottest and most humid places in Turkey. Evenings, when the bridge is lit and the riverside cools.

Good to know

It is a bridge - half an hour, and there is nothing to enter. Adana is a working industrial city with limited tourist infrastructure. Summer heat is genuinely oppressive.

Nearby

The Sabancı Central Mosque is at the bridge's end; Adana's kebab houses are in the centre.

Key facts