Trakya'da bir Bizans kentinin surlar odaklı tarihsel topoğrafyası: Vize (Bizye)

This is a topographical study of an ancient settlement in southern Thrace. Located in the provincial district of the city Kırklareli in Turkey today, Vize (Bizye) was respectively the residential capital of the Thracian kings from the 3rd century BC on, the Roman city prospered under Trajan and Hadrian, a Late Antique and early Christian city with fortifications repaired and modified throughout the following centuries of the Byzantine period. Becoming a garrison regarding the Bulgarian threat especially from the 9th century on, the city survived as proved by the 9th century church of Hagia Sophia. The city maintained in the years of intensive attacks of the 13th -14th centuries until it was taken by the Ottomans in 1453. The Ottoman settlement lay mainly on the old Byzantine topography and extended with residential quarters on a small scale. After the Russian-Ottoman and Balkan Wars of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, modern settlement of the Turkish Republic started developing towards the south on the plain, leaving the old acropolis to the small local houses and the ghosts of the Roman and Byzantine monuments. Although the archaeological significance of the site was known already at the beginning of the 20th century, neither a well-documented systematic excavation nor a comprehensive topographical study of the acropolis was made. Hitting the road with this motivation, we have undertaken a topographical survey throughout two summer campaigns in 2011 and 2012 on the acropolis of Vize, which is the core of the settlement from the Roman until the end of the Ottoman period. The main purpose of the survey was to document primarily the fortifications in detail in order to produce a digital topographical plan. Other monuments on site have also been measured and inserted into this plan. This thesis discusses the results gained through the comprehensive analysis of the fortifications, their material, masonry and typology of the structural elements comparing with parallel examples from particularly the same administrative territory of Thrace. The presumable circuit of the walls half of which is missing, the extension and the changes of the urban structure are discussed considering the construction periods of the walls together with the other remaining monuments and archaeological rests on site.