Aikaterinh Balla Source: C.E.T.I. © Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace

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A large vaulted-roofed building known as “Hana” survives almost intact in the centre of the archaeological site of Traianoupolis. It was built by Gazi Evrenos in the second half of the 14th century, when Thrace was under the Turkish rule. It was basically served as a station for travellers on the route of Thessaloniki – Constantinople as well as a guesthouse for those using the healing springs. The Roman thermal springs bore a votive inscription of Gazi Evrenos until the Second World War.

It is a large, oblong, vaulted-roofed edifice consisting of an antechamber and a large central hall. There were built chimneys in the antechamber, now in ruins. Among the most characteristic features of the building are the cloisonné masonry and the stone architectural members. The gate is arched, while the roof is steep-pitched with stones placed in a layer of mortar. The big open cavities alongside the large sides seem like the spots where the wooden beams rested.

The building was one of the early Ottoman buildings constructed in Thrace before the fall of Constantinople as well as one of the several similar public welfare buildings founded in this period along the route of the Via Egnatia. Regarding the construction techniques and the architectural form, this monumental edifice does not differ from any Byzantine buildings of the same period except from the size, the chosen material, the cost and, most of all, the deliberate stateliness that demonstrates the tendency of the attacking Ottomans to impress the local population by erecting imposing public welfare buildings.

The archaeological collection of Traianoupolis is now kept in “Hana”.