Gazi Atik Ali Pasha Mosque, Istanbul

Atik Ali Pasha Camii stands on the summit of Istanbul's Second Hill, just across from the Column of Constantine erected in 330; it was built in 1496 by Hadım Ali Pasha, grand vezir of Beyazit II ¹.

The plan is unusual: a rectangular room divided by an arch into unequal parts — a dome over the larger northern section and a semidome over the southern, beneath which sits the mihrab as in a great apse — while two pairs of smaller domed rooms flanking the north served as dervish hospices ². The mosque once had dependencies — an imaret, a medrese and a tekke — of which only part of the medrese survives across Divan Yolu; it is one of the few Turkish buildings Pierre Gilles described after his stay in 1546–50, noting its portico borne on eighteen green and white marble columns ³. The original five-bay porch has vanished; the minaret rises from the north-west corner ².

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 215–218 (Atik Ali Pasha Camii and medrese).