Rüstem Pasha Mosque wears more Iznik tile than almost any building in the world, and most people walk straight past it. Sinan raised the prayer hall on a high terrace above a crowded market street, setting it over a maze of vaulted shops whose rents once paid for its upkeep. It was built in the early 1560s for Rüstem Pasha, grand vizier and son-in-law to Suleiman the Magnificent, and one of the era's richest and most exacting managers of the state's money. Plain stairways climb from the mat-sellers' bazaar to a courtyard the shoppers below rarely find.
Step inside and the walls dissolve into gardens of tulips, carnations and hyacinths, painted in the tomato red that Iznik potters mastered for a few decades and then lost. The colour glows slightly raised from the surface, catching light from the high windows. Tiles climb the piers, frame the mihrab and spill onto the porch outside, thousands in all. Restoration has lifted centuries of grime, so the blues and reds read as sharply now as when they were fired. It stays a working neighbourhood mosque, quieter than the great imperial complexes, and rewards anyone who climbs to find it.