The city is a commercial centre for woven textiles, silks, carpets and agricultural products and has a growing tourism industry.

[6] Ciğer tava (breaded and deep-fried liver) is often served with a side of cacık, a dish of diluted strained yogurt with chopped cucumber.

The vagaries of the border region between Asia and Europe gave rise to Edirne's claim to be the most frequently contested spot on earth.

[8] The city was reestablished by the Roman Emperor Hadrian on the site of Orestias (named after its mythological founder Orestes), which was itself built on a previous Thracian settlement known as Uskadama, Uskudama, Uskodama or Uscudama.

In 1206 the Latin regime gave Adrianople and the surrounding area to the Byzantine aristocrat Theodore Branas as a hereditary fief.

[10] Theodore Komnenos, Despot of Epirus, took possession of it in 1227, but three years later was defeated at Klokotnitsa by Emperor Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria.

[12] The city remained the seat of Ottoman power until 1453, when Mehmed II took Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and moved the capital there.

[14] That Adrianople/Edirne continued to hold an important place in Ottoman hearts is reflected in the fact that Sultan Mehmed IV left the Topkapı Palace in Constantinople to die here in 1693.

The wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, spent six weeks in Edirne (then Adrianople) in the spring of 1717 and left an account of her experiences there in her The Turkish Embassy Letters.

The Great Powers – Britain, Italy, France and Russia – attempted to coerce the Ottoman Empire into ceding Adrianople to Bulgaria during the temporary winter truce of the First Balkan War.

Edirne was swiftly reconquered by the Ottomans during the Second Balkan War under the leadership of Enver Pasha (who proclaimed himself the "second conqueror of Adrianople" after Murad I) following the collapse of the Bulgarian army in the region.

Adrianople also contained the parish of St. Anthony of Padua (Minors Conventual) and a school for girls conducted by the Sisters of Charity of Agram.

They had eighteen parishes or missions, six of which were in the principality, with twenty churches or chapels, thirty-one priests, of whom six were Assumptionists and six were Resurrectionists; and eleven schools with 670 pupils.

The Selimiye Mosque, built in 1575 and designed by Turkey's greatest architect, Mimar Sinan (c. 1489/1490–1588), is the most important monument in the city and became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2011.

Sinan himself believed the dome to be higher than that of Hagia Sophia, the former Byzantine Orthodox Cathedral in Istanbul, but modern measuring methods seem to suggest otherwise.

Named after Sultan Selim II (r. 1566–1574) who commissioned it but did not live to see its completion, the mosque is decorated with Turkish marble and magnificent İznik tiles.

It is the most complete surviving mosque complex in Edirne, consisting of an imaret (soup kitchen), darüşşifa (hospital), timarhane (asylum), hospice, tıp medrese (medical school), tabhane (accommodation for dervishes) bakery and assorted depots.

The Kasr-ı Adalet ("Justice Castle"), originally built as part of the palace complex, stands intact next to the small Fatih Bridge over the Tunca river.

[31] The splendid appearance of the palace in the late 1460s when it glistened with gold, silver and marble was described by Kritovoulos of İmbros in his History of Mehmed the Conqueror.

Edirne has three historic covered bazaars: the Kavaflar Arastası (Cobblers Arcade), next to the Selimiye Mosque and constructed to bring in an income to support the külliye; the Bedesten next to the Eski Cami which was supported by the income from the shops; and the Semiz Ali Paşa Çarşısı (Ali Pasha Bazaar, AKA Kapalı Çarşı), another work of Sinan dating back to 1568.

Of the original Roman Hadrianopolis only slight remains of the fortifications survive near the so-called Macedonian Tower,[36] itself probably a part of the defences although much patched-up and altered over the ensuing centuries.

[37] The Meriç and Tunca rivers, which flow around west and south of the city, are crossed by elegant arched bridges dating back to early Ottoman times.