The Sultan Bayezid II Complex Health Museum, located in the northwestern city of Edirne, will be introduced in a new documentary to be broadcast in France, Trakya University has announced.
According to the statement of the university, the French Arte TV channel, which offers broadcasts on culture and art, came to Edirne to film a documentary.
Trakya University rector professor Erhan Tabakoğlu provided information about the complex to the production team of the "Invitation au Voyage" program, which is translated as "Invitation to Travel."
Noting that the Sultan Bayezid II Complex Health Museum is one of the most-visited landmarks in Edirne, Tabakoğlu said: “Just as it is possible to understand a whole person from a cell, we can understand from this small structure where the Ottoman civilization came from and where it reached, how it ruled over three continents for 600 years. The complex bears the beautiful codes of our civilization. Hospitals of the Ottoman era were the best examples of health centers in the world for a long time. I invite everyone to our complex to see the point our ancestors reached in the science of medicine and the peak reached in civilization."
The foundations of the complex were laid by Sultan Bayezid II while he mounted a 1484 expedition to Akkerman, located in the gulf of the Dniester River on the Black Sea, and construction was completed in 1488. During the Ottoman era, the complex served as a medical school, hospital and almshouse. It was the only hospital devoted solely to mental health treatment after the 1800s.
After the Balkan Wars in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the complex was destroyed and its activities were terminated. It was later acquired by Trakya University in 1978 and restored in 1986.
