Bayezid II Complex

The külliye built for Bayezid II at Edirne in 1488 by the architect Mimar Hayruddin was a complete institution - mosque, madrasa, kitchen, bakery, bathhouse and, at its heart, a darüşşifa, a hospital that operated for around four hundred years, until the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. It became part of Trakya University in 1993, the museum opened in 1997, and since 2016 the complex has been on Turkey's tentative World Heritage list. It is now the Health Museum, and it is the reason people make the walk out along the Tunca. The hospital was built as a hexagonal domed hall with treatment rooms opening off it, and the practice recorded there is what draws attention: patients were treated with running water, scent, diet and music, with musicians playing set makams to specific conditions on a schedule several days a week, an approach documented by the seventeenth-century traveller Evliya Çelebi among others. The museum reconstructs the wards and consulting rooms with mannequins and period instruments, and explains Ottoman medical practice room by room. It won a European Museum of the Year special award in 2004.

What's there

• The hexagonal hospital hall - the domed core with rooms around it.
• The music therapy room - the reconstructed treatment space.
• The medical instruments - Ottoman surgical and pharmacy equipment.
• The wider külliye - mosque, madrasa and kitchen buildings.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Mornings; the site is quiet compared with Edirne's mosques. Check the weekly closing day.

Before you go

Displays lean on mannequin tableaux, which some find dated. Labelling is largely Turkish with partial English. It is a 25-minute walk from the centre with little shade.

Nearby

The Selimiye and Üç Şerefeli mosques are in the town centre; the Tunca bridges are alongside.