Edirne

The Ottomans took the city from the Byzantines in the 1360s, and as Edirne it became their capital under Murad I, the base from which the sultans' armies pushed deeper into the Balkans. Murad II raised a mosque with a minaret of three balconies here and began a new palace on the hunting grounds beside the Tunca River, finished by Mehmed II. Even after the court moved to Constantinople in 1453, Edirne remained a favourite residence of the sultans, and Selim II, who had governed it as a prince, had Sinan build the Selimiye Mosque on the hill above the old town, completed in 1575 and counted by Sinan as his masterpiece.

Mehmed IV, the hunting sultan, spent his last years at Edirne after his deposition in 1687 and died there in 1693. The court finally left in 1718, when Ahmed III settled in Constantinople, and the palace slowly fell into decay. In 1829 a Russian army occupied the city, and the peace signed here, the Treaty of Adrianople, ended that war on Russia's terms, granting autonomy to Serbia and promising it to Greece.