Karaağaç Train Station and Interesting Story

Karaağaç Train Station is located in the town of Karaağaç in Edirne and is located in the II. It is the train station building built during the reign of Abdulhamid. The building, which was built as Edirne Train Station, is used today as the Rectorate Building of Trakya University.

Sirkeci Station in Istanbul is one of the station buildings built as an example. It was built in the neoclassical style by Architect Kemaleddin on behalf of the Eastern Railways Company. It is a three-storey, rectangular building and 80 m long. It was one of the most important stations of the railway connecting Istanbul to Europe.

Its construction was completed in 1914, but due to the First World War that started that year, the railway route could not be put into service as the route was changed. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire remained outside its borders.

July 24, 1923 date of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty Elm, Greece Bosnaköy with the devastation of money in Western Anatolia, was given to Turkey as war reparations. Thus, Karaağaç Station, which entered Turkish borders again, was received from the Greeks on September 14, 1923 and opened for operation in 1930.

However, most of the Rumeli railways were outside the borders of the country and the trains had to enter Greece to reach Edirne from Istanbul; so a new railway line construction has been launched. In August 1971, after the opening of the new railway line between Pehlivanköy and Edirne and the new station building in the city, the rails in front of the Karaağaç station building were removed.

The building, located very close to the Turkish-Greek border, served as an outpost during the 1974 Cyprus events. It was awarded to the Edirne Engineering and Architecture Academy, which was founded in 1977 and forms the basis of today's Trakya University.

The building, which was restored in accordance with its original by Trakya University, has been serving as the Rectorate Building since 1998. In the same year, the Lausanne Monument representing the Lausanne Treaty was built in its garden, and one of the additional station buildings was opened as the Lausanne Museum. The building has been used as the Faculty of Fine Arts since 2017.

Kepirtepe Village Institute

One of the Karaağaç Station buildings hosted the Thrace Village Teacher School and the Instructor Course in 1937. Village Teacher School was opened in the same building in 1938. The school, which was moved from Karaağaç in 1939, later turned into Kepirtepe Village Institute.