White Bridge (Mysia)
Coordinates: 40 ° 22 ′ 21 ″ N , 27 ° 18 ′ 36 ″ E
| White bridge | ||
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| Official name | Acc | |
| Convicted | Road to Gallipoli | |
| Crossing of | Granikos ( Biga Çayı ) | |
| place | Mysia ( Turkey ) | |
| construction | Arch bridge | |
| width | 8 step | |
| Number of openings | 8 (including flood outlets) | |
| Clear width | Max. 18 paces | |
| construction time | 4th century AD | |
| Status | ruin | |
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The White Bridge ( Turkish Akköprü ) was a late antique bridge over the Granikos River ( Biga Çayı ) in Mysia in what is now northwestern Turkey . The bridge, which was probably built in the 4th century AD, was part of the important coastal road to Gallipoli on the Dardanelles in Ottoman times .
The building attracted the attention of early European travelers due to its clean design and magnificent marble cladding , but fell victim to stone robbery in the 19th century.
exploration
The White Bridge was first mentioned in 1699 in Chishull's travelogue, which found it still under traffic. Other visitors were William Turner in 1815, Tchihatchef in 1847 and Janke in the 1890s, all of whom certified that the building had ancient origins.
Turner describes a very splendid Roman bridge made of bricks and small stones, which is clad with large slabs of fine marble: the bridge rests on eight arches , the four largest of which are barrel vaults, spanning the actual river, flanked by two smaller culverts on the embankments. The largest width is 18 paces, the bridge width is eight paces. The arches are relieved by vaulted cavities directly under the road surface. Such hollow structures can also be observed in the vicinity at the Makestos Bridge and the Aisepos Bridge , which, according to Frederick William Hasluck, indicates a common origin under Constantine the Great († 337 AD).
Eighty years later, Janke was still able to identify several round arches and pillars made of carefully smoothed stone blocks measuring 50 × 100 cm on the left bank, both typical characteristics of Roman semicircular arch bridges. Barely a decade later, Hasluck found essentially only a brick vaulted barrel vault, stripped of its stone cladding, on the western ramp in 1906: the theft of material for the construction of Karabogha-Boghashehr-Chaussee had in the meantime finally destroyed the bridge. The span was 2.70 m, the width of the carriageway could be reconstructed with 7.40 m. The upper parts of the bridge stump showed signs of Turkish repairs with coarse rubble stones and bricks, which may have come from the 17th century.
The current condition of the bridge ruins is unknown, the White Bridge is no longer listed in O'Connor's bridge collection.
See also
literature
- Frederick William Hasluck: A Roman Bridge on the Aesepus . In: The Annual of the British School at Athens . Volume 12, 1905/06, pp. 184-189.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Hasluck (1905/06), p. 188
- ↑ a b Hasluck (1905/06), p. 189
- ↑ Map Hellespontus and Bithynia. In: WM Ramsay's Historical Geography. Retrieved March 24, 2011 .
- ↑ a b Hasluck (1905/06), pp. 188f.
- ↑ The “small Roman bridge” over the Granicus listed there is likely to be a different structure (Colin O'Connor: Roman Bridges , Cambridge University Press 1993, ISBN 0-521-39326-4 , p. 125).
