Selimiye Mosque
— — the dome the architect called his own.
Not only on a wall.
“Mimar Sinan was eighty when he finished the Selimiye for Sultan Selim II in 1574, and he called it his masterpiece — the work in which he believed he had at last surpassed the Hagia Sophia. The dome spans 31.25 metres and rests on eight piers set into the walls, so the prayer hall opens beneath it as a single uninterrupted room. Four slender minarets, each more than eighty metres tall, mark the corners and are visible from the Bulgarian border. Inside, the Iznik tilework runs cool blue against the warm Edirne light.
Selimiye 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 Selimiye Mosque stands on the high ground at the centre of Edirne, the former Ottoman capital in Turkish Thrace near the borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Commissioned by Sultan Selim II and designed by the chief imperial architect Mimar Sinan, it was completed in 1574 — early sources record 1574/75 — and forms the centrepiece of a külliye that also held a madrasa, a Quranic school, and a covered market whose rents endowed the complex. UNESCO inscribed the Selimiye and its social complex on the World Heritage List in 2011. The site sits a short walk from the old caravan road through the Balkans.
The central dome spans 31.25 metres in diameter and rises about 42 metres above the prayer hall floor, carried on eight massive piers integrated into the perimeter walls so that no interior columns interrupt the room. Four minarets, each approximately 83 metres tall and pierced by three independent spiral stairways, frame the corners — among the tallest minarets ever built in the Ottoman tradition. The mihrab and the sultan's loge are lined with Iznik tiles from the workshops' finest period, the cobalt and turquoise palette set against a white slip ground. Sinan, then eighty, wrote in his autobiography that the Selimiye was the work in which he had finally outdone the dome of Hagia Sophia.
Edirne lies about 235 kilometres northwest of Istanbul on the road to the Bulgarian border, reachable by bus from Istanbul's Esenler terminal in around three hours. The mosque is open to visitors outside the five daily prayer times, free of charge, with a modest dress code and shoes removed at the door. The best light on the dome interior comes mid-morning, when the windows in the drum and the half-domes turn the white plaster warm. The Edirne archaeological museum and the Üç Şerefeli Mosque are within a short walk across the same hill.