Canakkale - Bigali Fortress 🏰

Hello dear travelers! In todays travel post, we will take you to a beautiful historical place on the way to Çanakkale-Eceabat, which has been restored lately. We used to see this place all the time as we drove by but we never had the opportunity to stop and visit it, this time we decided to go there in our free time and we are glad we did. I hope you like it too, let's start if you are ready!

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The name of this place is Bigalı Fortress, there is a parking area for you to park your car. When you enter, it looks very clean and nice because it is a newly built place. We went to the ticket office to buy our tickets and we were glad that there was no different price tariff for foreign citizens. There is a ticket fee of 25 TL per person, I think it is a very reasonable price for this place, I think it could even be more. After buying our ticket, we moved towards the Bigalı Fortress West Gate Epigraph and started to explore the inside by entering through this gate. I would like to share the informative article in front of the gate with you;

While the epigraph which was meant to be on the Western Gate of the Bigalı Fortress has not been reached, the complete text of the epigraph was found in the work of Kececizade Izeet Molla, titled Divan-i Izzet.

English meaning of the Western Gate Epigraph

If Mahmud Khan has an enemy, let him be defeated A thousand yeears of happiness be his like his fortune If Alexander wanted to mirror the sword of victory Let him come and be that Khan's gunman The nightingale of that patriotic Sultan's temperament wants the world to envy his rose garden he built such a fort that as one watches let the sky walls be troubled to his enemies may the ruler of the era live long, he built a new fort Izzet wrote the date of its construction on the Seddulbahir Gate (1233)

source: Informative Board

After learning about this place, we moved on to enter through the west gate and it looked really magnificent.

Bigali Fortress is full of rare artifacts reflecting the historical and cultural richness of the region. The ancient artifacts and archaeological remains exhibited here take its visitors back to the past, just like us. Having the opportunity to see objects from different periods such as Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman is very enjoyable, especially if you are interested in history. Since we generally like this kind of historical trips, we enjoyed it very much here.

There are detailed information boards that tell visitors about the history of the fortress area. Thanks to these boards, we were able to make our visit more meaningful by learning about the turning points and important events in the history of Bigali Fortress, because when we don't know anything about the place we are visiting, we have to search on the internet and this makes it a little difficult, we always prefer to have information boards inside. You can also explore the map of the fortress area and discover the locations of the historical buildings.

Since it is a newly built place, there are very few visitors here and it is actually better because it is not crowded, there are many things inside such as Mahmudiye Mosque, Bigali Barracks, Archaeological Field Research, Simulation room, Cannons, Shells, Ruins. It is surrounded by walls, but since there are small gaps between the walls, it is possible to see around landscape. In general, it is not a place where you can spend many hours. But I can say that it is a really successful place in terms of landscape and visuality.

That's all we can talk about Bigali fortress, if you come to Canakkale, I think it is a place you should stop and see on the way, I recommend it. I hope you didn't get bored while reading, I wish everyone a enjoyable trip! See you on our next trip!

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