Nusretiye Mosque carries some of the slenderest minarets in Istanbul — twin shafts so thin they look drawn with a pen. Sultan Mahmud II ordered it in the 1820s on the Tophane shore, where the empire's cannon foundry once thundered; the old foundry hall still stands next door. Krikor Balyan, first court architect of the Armenian Balyan dynasty, replaced a barracks mosque lost to fire and shaped this one in the late flourish of Ottoman Baroque: wavy cornices, S-curved buttresses, oval medallions. The name means "victory" — chosen in the very years Mahmud was remaking the state around him.
You come along the waterfront, and the mosque rises as a single domed cube of pale stone on a high platform. Inside, calligraphy is the draw: a great inscription band by Mustafa Rakım, the era's finest hand, circles the walls in gilded letters. Beside the mosque stands the muvakkithane, the timekeeper's little pavilion, carved with shells and scrolls. Restored in recent years, Nusretiye still works as a place of prayer, holding its corner between the tram, the busy waterfront, and the art galleries that fill Tophane today.