Mihrimah Sultan Mosque (Edirnekapı)

Mosque · EdirnekapıIstanbul,Türkiye

A Sinan mosque on Istanbul's highest hill by the land walls, its upper walls dissolved into windows so the single dome seems to glow.

Mihrimah Sultan Mosque seems built more from light than from stone: its upper walls dissolve into rows of windows, and the single great dome covers a prayer hall that glows even on grey days. A lone slender minaret marks the skyline before the walls come into view. Inside, whitewashed surfaces and thin piers keep every sightline open. Sinan raised it in the 1560s on the highest of the old city's seven hills, beside the Edirne Gate, where the old land road entered Constantinople. The coloured glass in the qibla windows is held to be original sixteenth-century work, and it does the decorating here. His patron was Mihrimah, the only daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent and one of the wealthiest women of the empire. She has a second mosque across the water at Üsküdar, and a modern story binds the two. Standing on the city's most exposed summit has a price: earthquake after earthquake has shaken the building, and careful restorations have kept it up. It remains a working neighbourhood mosque, where a few worshippers and the odd visitor share Sinan at his most luminous.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The decoration is overhead, not on the walls — the wall under each of the four great arches holds three rows of windows, with a further ring around the dome’s base.
Midday is the mosque’s hour — with windows on every side, the hall is at its most luminous when the sun is high and strikes the arch walls straight on.
Sinan without the queues — perched off the tourist spine, it stays quiet while the imperial mosques downhill fill with tour groups; often you share the hall with only worshippers.
A neighbourhood mosque first — this is a living prayer hall, not a museum; dress modestly, keep voices low, and step aside when prayer gathers — no one will mind how long you linger.

Things to do

1
Watch the whole room dim as a cloud crosses the windows
Stand directly beneath the central dome and look straight up into the four great arches. Follow the tiered windows ringing the hall, then wait for a cloud to pass — the whole room dims and brightens like a lamp. Few interiors anywhere respond to the sky this quickly.
2
Approach it the old way
Walk up toward the mosque from the Theodosian land walls and the Edirne Gate. Keep your eyes on the single minaret as it climbs above the rooftops — the same first sight that greeted travellers arriving overland for centuries. The higher you climb, the more of the building the hill reveals.
3
Feel the hill from the courtyard
Leave the prayer hall for the arcaded courtyard and walk to where the ground begins to fall away. This is the crown of the old city's tallest hill, and you sense it underfoot — streets dropping off on every side toward the Golden Horn. Sit a moment in the shade of the portico and let the neighbourhood carry on around you.