Amasya is a city built in the narrow valley that the Yeşilırmak has cut between Mount Harşena and the slopes opposite, and this geography has turned the whole history of the town into a story of crossings between its two banks. On the northern bank stand the citadel, the rock-cut royal tombs and the riverside houses known as the Yalıboyu houses; on the southern bank lie the bazaar, the mosques, the madrasas and the newer quarters. The bridges that join the two banks have therefore never been mere pieces of transport infrastructure in Amasya: they have become documents that show how the city lived, in which direction it grew, and in which age and by whose hand it was shaped. Today there are some eleven bridges across the Yeşilırmak in the city centre. Four of them are structures that have kept their historic character in their stone fabric; several others have kept their site, their name and their memory while their structure has been renewed many times over the centuries.

Local people liken these bridges to "brides standing in a row" or to "stone necklaces". The comparison is apt, for anyone walking along the river from the east of the town to the west passes a succession of structures reaching from the Romans to the Danishmendids, from the Seljuks to the Ottomans and on to the Republic. The principal bridges of the city centre are the Alçak Bridge, the Meydan (İstasyon) Bridge, the Kunç Bridge, the Helkıs (Hükümet) Bridge and the Magdenus (Madenüs) Bridge; a little outside the town, on the Tokat road, stands the Çağlayan (İltekin Gazi) Bridge, which survives from the Danishmendid period. The sources do not always agree about their founders, their dates of construction and their repairs, and these discrepancies are themselves a reflection of the long and interrupted lives of the bridges.

The Bridges of Amasya in the Eyes of Early Writers

The earliest known testimony to the bridges of Amasya comes from Strabo, the geographer whom the city itself produced. Describing his homeland, Strabo says that the citadel descends sheer to the river and that the city is enclosed by a wall along the bank, and then writes that two bridges had been built over the river, "one from the city to the suburb and the other from the suburb to the outer territory". This description, in which the northern bank with the citadel counted as the city proper and the far bank of the river as its suburb, shows that the two-banked layout of Amasya has existed since antiquity. The researcher Kuzucular argues that one of the bridges mentioned by Strabo is the Alçak Bridge, which links the city to the suburb.

Testimonies from the Ottoman period also show clearly the place of the bridges in the life of the town. Hans Dernschwam, who came to Amasya with an Austrian embassy in the spring of 1555, saw a city squeezed into a narrow valley, where two-storey mud-brick houses seemed almost piled on top of one another, and noted that there was one wooden and three stone bridges across the Yeşilırmak, which flowed through the middle of the town. In the seventeenth century Evliya Çelebi records that the crossing now called the Hükümet Bridge connected the Sergis Gate on the western side of the citadel with the Garibler Mosque in the town. The French archaeologist Georges Perrot, who came to Amasya in 1861, speaks of houses stretching along both sides of the Yeşilırmak, each with its cherry orchard, and of wooden bridges catching the eye on every side; the scene, he writes, reminded him a little of the Tiber in Rome. Taken together, these three testimonies make it clear that wooden bridges were long in use in Amasya alongside the stone ones, and that the appearance of the town was shaped by both kinds of structure together.

The Alçak Bridge

The Alçak Bridge, regarded as the oldest of the bridges of Amasya, was built in the Roman period over the Yeşilırmak, then known as the Iris, to connect the citadel and its surroundings, which at that time formed the centre of the town, with the settlement on the opposite bank. Its age is most often given as around eighteen hundred years; some accounts speak of a history approaching two thousand years. The bridge was built of well-dressed cut stone so as to form four high arches. Over the centuries, however, the silt carried by the river raised its bed, the tall piers of the bridge were buried in this fill, and only the upper parts of the arches remained visible. When the deck over the arches also came very close to the surface of the water, the people gave the structure the name Alçak Köprü, the "Low Bridge". The bridge is considered one of the clearest pieces of evidence that in Roman times a settlement extended along the southern bank of the river, opposite the Harşena citadel.

At the end where the bridge met the town there once stood the Karanlık Kapı, the "Dark Gate", which gave entry to the city; this gate has not survived. The Amasya historian Abdizade Hüseyin Hüsameddin Efendi also relates that the gate in front of the Alçak Bridge was called the "Saray Kapısı" (Palace Gate), and that this gate, which had an arch of black marble, was pulled down by Ziya Pasha. The name of the gate recalls that the road crossing the bridge climbed towards the defensive terraces of the citadel and the terraces of the palace.

The present appearance of the bridge is the product of interventions made from the nineteenth century onwards. Believing that the bridge had become dangerous as its arches sank lower, the mutasarrıf (district governor) of Amasya, the poet Ziya Pasha, had a wooden bridge with eleven piers built on top of the old arches in 1865. This structure did not last long and was swept away by the waters of the Yeşilırmak in the flood of 1881. In the time of Mutasarrıf Atıf Bey another bridge, sturdier than the previous one, was built once again on top of the old arches; the sources state that stones from a disused church were used in this second structure. The bridge was strengthened again in 1965. Other sources, however, write that the wooden bridge was renewed with concrete and steel joints after a flood of the Yeşilırmak in the 1950s, and that the structure acquired its present appearance after a restoration in 2009. This divergence in dates also shows that the bridge has been kept standing for a hundred and fifty years by one repair after another. Today, with the layers of later ages rising above its Roman arches, the Alçak Bridge is one of the most photographed crossings in Amasya and one of those most used by pedestrians.

The Meydan (İstasyon) Bridge

The Meydan Bridge, at the end of Ziya Paşa Boulevard, is known today as the İstasyon (Station) Bridge and connects the Üçler (İstasyon) quarter with the Hacı İlyas quarter. The name Meydan comes from the fact that the bridge lies directly in front of the Meydan Gate, one of the great gates of the Amasya citadel. Hüsameddin Efendi writes that the Meydan Gate, which he describes as standing intact on the western side of the Lower Citadel, opened towards the Meydan Bridge.

The first bridge at this point was built in 1145, in the reign of the Anatolian Seljuk Sultan Mesud I. The sources describe the original structure as built of cut stone, with five spans, arched and in the harpuşta style. Harpuşta is a classic form in which the deck of the bridge rises gently towards the middle and slopes down to either side, making it easier for water to run off. Sultan Mesud I's connection with Amasya was not limited to this bridge; it is also recorded that the same sultan repaired the Amasya citadel in 1143. The seismicity of the region and the floods of the river did not allow the first structure a long life, and the bridge collapsed in the great earthquake of 1374.

The bridge that stands today was rebuilt on the remains of the first one, preserving its character. Its founder was Emir Şadgeldi Pasha, who governed Amasya between 1360 and 1382. The date of construction is given in some sources as after the earthquake of 1374, in others as the 1370s, and in others simply as 1370. The bridge of Şadgeldi Pasha's time consists of three broad piers of cut stone with arches thrown between them; some descriptions speak of four arches. Fügen İlter, the author of a fundamental study of Anatolian Turkish bridges, notes that although the bridge was built in the fourteenth century, it differs markedly from other bridges built in the same period.

In the Ottoman period the bridge again faced severe trials. It was seriously damaged in the great flood of 1824, and the following year it was damaged once more in the earthquake of 1825. In 1828 the bridge was thoroughly repaired and renewed by Özlü Yusuf Ağa, the ayan (local notable) of Amasya. In the Republican period growing traffic made new interventions necessary, and in the major repair of 1940 the deck was widened, covered with concrete and fitted with metal railings along its edges. Thus a Seljuk foundation, a fourteenth-century stone body, a nineteenth-century repair and twentieth-century concrete all coexist in a single bridge. Built at the point where the river is narrowest, this short and wide bridge long connected the main arteries of the town, and in time it came to struggle with the growing volume of vehicle traffic.

The Kunç Bridge

The Kunç Bridge, which connects the Bayezidpaşa quarter with the Şamlar quarter, is the best known of the Seljuk monuments in the city centre. The bridge is also known as the Künç Bridge and the Kuş (Bird) Bridge. According to the common view, its founder was Hundi Hatun, the daughter of the Seljuk Sultan Mesud. The sources, however, do not agree on this point. Some date the bridge to the twelfth century, associate its construction with Sultan Mesud II, and note that opinions differ as to whether Hundi (Hondi) Hatun was this sultan's daughter or his mother. Since the bridge has no inscription, neither its date of construction nor the identity of its founder can be fixed with documentary certainty. What is certain is that the bridge is remembered as the charitable foundation of a woman of the dynasty, and this tradition is in keeping with the custom, in Seljuk and Ottoman Amasya, of royal ladies commissioning mosques, bridges and mosque complexes (külliye).

The name of the bridge also derives from this memory. The name Hundi is said to have turned over time in popular speech first into "Kundi" and then into "Kunç" or "Künç". The most distinctive feature of the bridge, built of cut stone and brick, is the breadth of the arches, almost equal in size, that link its three great piers. On the western faces of the piers, which face upstream, there are cutwaters, one angular and the others rounded. These projections break the force of the water and allow the piers to withstand strong currents. Fragments of reused sarcophagi can be seen on the middle pier, which shows that older building material, very probably of ancient date, was used in the construction of the bridge.

The Kunç Bridge lies on the eastern side of the town, on a stretch where the Yeşilırmak widens as it flows. This part of the river is a resting place for herons and other water birds, and it is also a favourite spot for anglers. There is no document explaining where the name Kuş Bridge comes from. Local testimony also relates that in the 1990s the river rose high enough on this stretch to flood. The bridge lies outside the boundaries of the site management plan prepared for Mount Harşena and the royal rock tombs; even so, whenever the historic bridges of the town are listed, it is always among the first to be named.

The Helkıs (Hükümet) Bridge

The Helkıs Bridge, in the very centre of the town, is known today as the Hükümet (Government) Bridge. Although its date of construction is not known for certain, it is accepted that a bridge has been in use at this point since Roman times. There are two explanations for the origin of the bridge's old name. According to one view, the bridge took this name because it stood near the Helkıs Gate of the inner citadel; Hüsameddin Efendi too writes that the eastern gate of the Lower Citadel opened towards the Helkıs Bridge. According to another explanation, the structure was called by this name because it was used by the people living in the Helkıs quarter. After Ziya Pasha had the Government House built at the northern end of the bridge in 1865, the bridge began to be called the Hükümet Bridge. This name also reflects the bridge's position, linking the administrative centre of the town with the bazaar.

When first built the bridge was of wood, and in the Ottoman period it was repaired several times and kept in use. In the early years of the Republic the ageing wooden bridge was demolished in 1938 by the governor of the day, Talat Öncel, and a new reinforced-concrete bridge was built in its place in 1940. Some sources, however, write that the bridge was rebuilt in reinforced concrete by Governor Talat Öncel after it had become completely derelict in 1940. The story of the clock tower at the northern end of the bridge is bound up with the same period. Ziya Pasha had a wooden clock tower built here in 1866. This tower, consisting of a square stone base, a cylindrical brick shaft and a wooden clock section, was pulled down in 1940 by Governor Talat Öncel with the promise of building a better one. The present clock tower was built in 2002, in the time of Governor Hüseyin Poroy, in imitation of the old one. In this way the bridge and the clock tower, together forming the town square, have kept both their name and their place.

The Magdenus (Madenüs) Bridge

The Magdenus Bridge, which crosses the river in front of the Sultan Bayezid Mosque, to the north of the mosque, is a crossing used only by pedestrians between the city centre and the Hatuniye quarter. Local people call it the Madenüs or Maydanoz (Parsley) Bridge. It is thought that the bridge was built in 1485 by Fatma Hatun, daughter of the Mevlevi Tâcîbeyzâde Sadi Çelebi, but this view has not been proven by documents. On the other hand, the fact that one of the gates opening into the inner citadel was connected with this bridge suggests that its history may go back much further, to the Roman period or even earlier. Hüsameddin Efendi also records that the Mağdenüs Gate of the citadel faced the Sultan Bayezid Mosque.

For a long time the bridge remained a wooden structure, and this material left it defenceless against floods. Damaged repeatedly by flood waters, the bridge was destroyed in the flood of 1968. In its place a pedestrian bridge with concrete piers and an iron body was built. The sources describe the next stage with different dates: according to some, the present concrete bridge replaced the metal-legged bridge in 2010, while according to others the bridge was restored again in 2011. The most widespread legend about the bridge's popular name holds that it was built by Fatma Hanım, known as thrifty or even miserly, with the money she had saved from selling parsley. No historical basis is known for this legend; it is better understood as an explanation for the way the name Magdenus turned into "maydanoz" through folk etymology.

At the northern end of the bridge, where the road coming from the bridge meets Hazeranlar Street, stands the Köprübaşı Mosque. The first mosque was built in 1748 (AH 1161) by Ömer Paşazade el-Hac Osman Bey, governor of Anatolia, was repaired in 1882–1883, and, having fallen into ruin over time, was demolished in 1972 and replaced by the present building. The way the names of the bridge and the mosque are tied to each other shows that the Magdenus crossing was an important point of neighbourhood life in the Ottoman period as well.

On the Names Magdenus and Helkıs

Magdenus and Helkıs are among the rare place names in Amasya that are thought to be of Greek origin and that have survived to the present day. On the basis of the survival of these names, Kuzucular argues that, along the road following the southern line of the river, the Magdenus Bridge gave access to the walled town and the Helkıs Bridge to the Helkıs quarter, and that both were bridges already in existence in the Byzantine period. According to the same researcher, the town walls, pierced by the Alçak Bridge and the Magdenus Bridge, very probably opened outwards at two further points, to the east and to the west, and these gates were joined by a road running parallel to the river. The road following the Alçak Bridge, in turn, crossed this axis and reached the defensive terraces of the inner citadel and the palace terraces. In this interpretation the bridges were parts of a system designed together with the gate arrangement of the citadel and the road network of the town.

Hüsameddin Efendi's description of the citadel confirms this relationship. According to him, the Lower Citadel had four gates and two towers: the eastern gate opened onto the Helkıs Bridge, the western Meydan Gate onto the Meydan Bridge, the Saray Gate stood in front of the Alçak Bridge, and the Mağdenüs Gate faced the Sultan Bayezid Mosque. It thus becomes clear that opposite each gate of the citadel there was a bridge, and that movement between the citadel and the far bank of the river was organised by way of the bridges.

The Çağlayan (İltekin Gazi) Bridge at the Entrance to the Town

The first historic bridge met by a traveller coming to Amasya from the direction of Tokat is the Çağlayan Bridge, some five kilometres outside the provincial centre, at the Eryatağı turn-off in the Helvacı quarter, by the junction for the army brigade on the Tokat highway. Locally it is most often called Çalak or Çalık, and in the past it was known as the İltekin Bridge. The names Çalak and Çalık are thought to derive from the words "çağlak" or "çahlak", meaning a cascade. The year of construction and the founder of the bridge are not known for certain. The general view is that it was built by İltekin Gazi, one of the Danishmendid emirs; the date of construction is given as 1075 in some sources and 1076 in others. According to another view, the bridge was built in the first half of the twelfth century by İltekin Gazi's son Hüsamüddevle Hasan. Whichever date is accepted, the bridge counts among the earliest monuments of the Danishmendid period in Amasya.

The bridge, about seventy metres long, has piers of cut stone and arches of brick. Its six wide openings are spanned by round brick arches. Triangular cutwaters stand on the western faces of the piers, and there is an angular projection on the western side of the pier at the very centre of the bridge. The alternating masonry of cut stone with brick courses is a technique rarely seen in Seljuk buildings, though it would become widespread in the buildings of the Western Anatolian beyliks in the fourteenth century. The broad, so-called house-type piers would likewise become one of the indispensable elements of later Ottoman bridges. With these features the Çağlayan Bridge is important as an early example in the development of bridge architecture in Anatolia.

Bridges against Floods and Earthquakes

The history of the bridges of Amasya is to a great extent the history of a struggle with nature. The Yeşilırmak, for all the fertility it brought, has from time to time surged and overflowed, and the position of the city on fault lines has frequently tested its buildings with earthquakes. The collapse of the Meydan Bridge in the earthquake of 1374, the damage it suffered in the flood of 1824 and the earthquake of 1825, the sweeping away of the wooden bridge on top of the Alçak Bridge in the flood of 1881, and the destruction of the Magdenus Bridge in the flood of 1968 are the documented stages of this struggle. Most of the stone bridges came through these trials by being repaired, while the wooden bridges were mostly rebuilt on the same spot.

The solutions that the builders developed against the current played a large part in the survival of the stone bridges. The cutwaters, or breakwaters, built on the faces of the piers that look upstream break the force of the water, reduce the pressure of the current on the piers, and prevent debris carried by the river from striking and damaging the structure. The angular and rounded cutwaters of the Kunç Bridge and the triangular cutwaters of the Çağlayan Bridge are the examples of this knowledge in Amasya. The Amasya researcher and writer Hüseyin Menç likewise attributes the survival of the stone bridges, despite so many floods, earthquakes and disasters, to the success of their architectural and structural calculations. These bridges also came through undamaged the floods and inundations that followed the rains which struck the region in the spring of 2026.

The role of governors and district governors, of local notables and of benefactors in the preservation of the bridges is also striking. The Seljuk sultan Mesud I, Emir Şadgeldi Pasha, the ayan Özlü Yusuf Ağa, the district governors Ziya Pasha and Atıf Bey, and in the Republican period the governors Talat Öncel and Hüseyin Poroy are the people whose names are associated with the present form of the bridges and their surroundings. The interventions that each period made with its own materials and according to its own needs have left successive layers on the bridges.

Present State and Conservation

Today the Meydan, Madenüs, Alçak and Hükümet bridges lie within the boundaries of the site management plan prepared as part of the UNESCO World Heritage nomination for Mount Harşena and the Pontic royal rock tombs. The plan states that five bridges built along the Yeşilırmak connect the Hatuniye and Nergis quarters with the other side of the town; of these, the Kunç Bridge lies outside the plan's boundaries. The western boundary of the Hatuniye quarter is drawn by the Meydan Bridge and its eastern boundary by the Hükümet Bridge. The plan emphasises that the houses later built on the walls along the river, the bridges linking the river to the opposite bank, and the relationship of these bridges with the river and the town together create a high landscape value.

The same plan notes that the Madenüs Bridge, the Hükümet Bridge, the clock tower and the Köprübaşı Mosque have lost their original form and have been rebuilt over time, so that their contribution to the historical record is more limited than that of the others. Their existence is nonetheless recognised as important for the cultural continuity of the town and for maintaining a link with the past. The Meydan Bridge and the Alçak Bridge, by contrast, are structures that have kept their historic fabric despite all the repairs. Lit up in the evenings, the bridges, together with the Yalıboyu houses, the citadel and the rock tombs, are inseparable parts of the familiar silhouette of Amasya; the Alçak Bridge in particular has become one of the indispensable settings for photographers, television shoots and wedding photographs.

Chronology

Late 1st century BC: Strabo writes that there are two bridges over the river at Amasya, one leading from the city to the suburb and the other from the suburb to the outer territory.

Roman period: The Alçak Bridge is built with four arches to connect the citadel with the settlement on the opposite bank of the river.

1075/1076: According to the common view, the Danishmendid emir İltekin Gazi has the Çağlayan (İltekin Gazi) Bridge built (according to some sources the bridge belongs to Hüsamüddevle Hasan in the first half of the twelfth century).

1143: The Seljuk Sultan Mesud I repairs the Amasya citadel.

1145: Sultan Mesud I has the Meydan Bridge built of cut stone, with five spans and in the harpuşta style.

12th century: According to tradition, Hundi Hatun has the Kunç Bridge built.

1374: The Meydan Bridge collapses in a great earthquake; it is rebuilt with the same character in the time of Emir Şadgeldi Pasha (1360–1382).

1485: The date at which the Magdenus Bridge is claimed to have been built by Fatma Hatun (not proven by documents).

1555: Hans Dernschwam records one wooden and three stone bridges across the Yeşilırmak.

1748: Ömer Paşazade el-Hac Osman Bey has the Köprübaşı Mosque built at the head of the Magdenus Bridge.

1824: The Meydan Bridge is badly damaged in a flood of the Yeşilırmak; the earthquake of 1825 damages it as well.

1828: Özlü Yusuf Ağa, the ayan of Amasya, has the Meydan Bridge repaired.

1861: Georges Perrot writes that the wooden bridges of Amasya reminded him of the Tiber.

1865: Mutasarrıf Ziya Pasha has a wooden bridge with eleven piers built on the arches of the Alçak Bridge; in the same year the Government House is built to the north of the Helkıs Bridge.

1866: Ziya Pasha has the wooden clock tower built at the northern end of the Hükümet Bridge.

1881: The wooden bridge on top of the Alçak Bridge is destroyed in a flood; it is rebuilt in the time of Mutasarrıf Atıf Bey.

1938: Governor Talat Öncel has the wooden Helkıs Bridge demolished.

1940: The Helkıs (Hükümet) Bridge is rebuilt in reinforced concrete; the deck of the Meydan Bridge is widened; the clock tower is pulled down.

1965: The Alçak Bridge is strengthened.

1968: The wooden Magdenus Bridge is destroyed in a flood.

1972: The Köprübaşı Mosque is demolished and the present building is erected in its place.

2002: The clock tower is rebuilt in imitation of the old one in the time of Governor Hüseyin Poroy.

2009: The Alçak Bridge is restored.

2010–2011: The Magdenus Bridge is rebuilt in concrete and restored.

Bibliography

Official sources

  • Governorship of Amasya, "Köprüler", amasya.gov.tr/kopruler. amasya.gov.tr
  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, Amasya Harşena Dağı ve Pontus Kral Kaya Mezarları Alan Yönetim Planı ve UNESCO Dünya Mirası Müracaat Dosyası Hazırlanması Projesi (2022–2027), Ankara 2022, pp. 47, 50, 59–69.
  • Türkiye Culture Portal, "Alçak Köprü", "Kunç Köprü", "Stasyon (Meydan) Köprüsü", "Magdinus ve Helkıs Köprüleri", "Çağlayan Köprüsü" (Amasya), kulturportali.gov.tr. kulturportali.gov.tr

Books

  • Duman, Damla, "Magnidus ve Helkıs Köprüleri", in N. Kozak (ed.), Online Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi, 2019. turkiyeturizmansiklopedisi.com
  • İlter, Fügen, Osmanlılara Kadar Anadolu Türk Köprüleri, General Directorate of Highways Publications, p. 247.

Other sources

  • Çolaker, İsa, "Amasya'nın Sıralı Gelinleri: Köprüler", isacolaker.com, 2014.
  • TDV Encyclopedia of Islam, entry "Amasya" (H. Dernschwam's observations of 1555).
  • Wikipedia, entries "Alçak Köprü" and "İstasyon Köprüsü" (auxiliary source).
  • "Amasya'nın asırlara meydan okuyan taş köprüleri", Habertürk, 30 June 2026; "Amasya'da en eskisi bin 800 yıllık: 4 medeniyetin izleri köprü üzerinde bulundu", Vatan.

Online sources