Süleymaniye Mosque
— Sinan's quiet answer to Hagia Sophia.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest of the imperial Ottoman mosques, raised by Mimar Sinan in the 1550s for Süleyman the Magnificent. Four minarets mark the four sultans since Mehmed the Conqueror; the central dome rises fifty-three metres above a courtyard that opens onto the Golden Horn. Inside, the stained glass of the qibla wall catches the late afternoon and softens the stone.
Süleymaniye Mosque, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Süleymaniye Mosque crowns the Third Hill of the old peninsula of Istanbul, looking north across the Golden Horn toward Galata. Commissioned by Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and designed by the chief imperial architect Mimar Sinan, the complex was built between 1550 and 1557. It anchors a külliye that originally included four medreses, a primary school, a hospital, a public kitchen, a hamam, and the tombs of Süleyman and his wife Hürrem Sultan. The mosque has been part of UNESCO's Historic Areas of Istanbul World Heritage Site since 1985.
Mimar Sinan considered Süleymaniye his journeyman work. Selimiye in Edirne would later be his masterpiece. The central dome spans 27.5 metres and rises 53 metres above the prayer hall, carried on four massive piers buried within the side walls so the interior reads as one calm space. The four minarets carry ten balconies between them, the conventional reading that Süleyman was the tenth sultan since Osman. Marble from across the empire faces the courtyard and mihrab.
Stained glass by the master Sarhoş İbrahim fills the qibla wall, throwing thin panels of red and blue across the carpet on a clear afternoon. The interior remains deliberately bright. Sinan placed more than a hundred windows around the dome and walls, and is said to have hung the soot-collecting oil lamps low enough that calligraphers could gather lampblack for new manuscript inks. The exterior reads best from across the Golden Horn at dusk, when the silhouette of the four minarets stands against the western sky.