Lozan Anıtı ve Müzesi (Karaağaç)

The Lausanne Monument and Museum is a monument, square and museum complex in the Karaağaç quarter, on the far bank of the Meriç River southwest of Edirne, inside Trakya University's Karaağaç campus. The best part of a visit is that you can see three layers together in the same garden: the modern monument raised in 1998, the historic station building designed by the architect Kemaleddin, and the museum that tells the story of the Treaty of Lausanne. The story of the monument begins with the story of Karaağaç itself. With the treaty signed in the Swiss city of Lausanne on 24 July 1923, the border between Turkey and Greece was redrawn and Karaağaç, on the southern bank of the Meriç, was left to Turkey. Sources record that the quarter was handed over in September 1923, and one of the museum's rooms is devoted to exactly this handover. The idea of the monument came from a decision of the Trakya University Senate at the end of 1996, which cited the joining of Karaağaç to the Republic under the Treaty of Lausanne as its reason. The foundation was laid on 29 March 1998, the monument and square were completed in 110 days, and they opened on 19 July 1998. The monument consists of three concrete columns standing on three concrete legs that rise from the ground at an angle of 45 degrees. The tallest column, at 36.45 metres, represents Anatolia, the second, at 31.95 metres, represents Thrace, and the third, standing between them at 17.45 metres, represents Karaağaç. A concrete ring 7.20 metres above the ground ties the columns together and stands for unity and solidarity. The 4.20 metre statue of a young woman in front of the ring holds a dove for peace in one hand and a document symbolising the treaty in the other. The semicircular pool at the foot of the monument represents the seas that surround Turkey on three sides. A sapling was planted around the square for each year of the Republic, and according to sources the number reached 75 in the autumn of 1998. At the entrance to the park stands a bust of İsmet İnönü, who led the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne Conference. The long, ornate building right next to the monument is the former Edirne station, known today as Karaağaç Railway Station. The three-storey building, designed by Kemaleddin in the neoclassical style on the model of Sirkeci Station, is about 80 metres long and was largely finished in 1914. Because of the war years and the changing borders, however, the station only entered service in 1930. As part of the line lay across the border, trains from Istanbul spent many years passing through the neighbouring country to reach Karaağaç. When a new railway towards Kapıkule and a new Edirne station opened in 1971, Karaağaç station was closed the same year. The building was later given to the university, restored to its original form, and used as the rectorate from 1998 to 2017 and as the Faculty of Fine Arts since then. You can take in its facade comfortably from the square. The museum's present name is the National Struggle and Lausanne Museum, and the Edirne Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism presents it as a museum run by Trakya University. In its early years the collection consisted of books, documents and photographs on the Treaty of Lausanne in two rooms, and the museum gained official status in 2000 through a letter from the Ministry of Culture. The exhibition moved several times within the campus, was enlarged, and reopened in its new arrangement on 19 April 2016. The ground floor is devoted to the National Struggle period in Thrace, and in the corridor the chronology of the period and the treaty maps stand side by side. The rooms on this floor use documents and photographs to tell of local organisation, the Thrace congresses and the Edirne newspapers of the time. The first floor is devoted to the liberation of Thrace and to Lausanne, and here you can see documents from Edirne's liberation in November 1922. The Lausanne room displays photographs of the delegation, letters of authority, pictures of the conference halls and the treaty's maps of the Thracian border. The last room holds cartoons from the conference, the Karaağaç protocol of the treaty and documents on the use of the station. Allowing an hour or two to see the exhibition without hurrying, walk around the square and look at the station facade is a comfortable plan. The Edirne Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism states that the museum is closed on Mondays; check visiting days and hours on the directorate's page before you go. To fit all the columns into a single frame, step back to the entrance of the square, at the start of the path lined with lamp posts. The contrast between the plain, geometric language of the monument and the arched facade of the station lets you see the architectural ideas of two different centuries side by side in the same garden. Karaağaç lies about four kilometres southwest of the city centre, and the Culture Portal notes that it can be reached by city public transport. Those who walk from the centre reach the quarter by crossing the historic bridges over the Tunca and the Meriç, and the walk itself is an introduction to Edirne's river scenery. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Edirne brochure also lists Karaağaç, Karaağaç Station and the Lausanne Monument together among the places not to be missed in the city. So it is a good idea to round off the visit with a short walk through the streets of the quarter.