Çinili Köşk, Istanbul

Çinili Köşk, the Tiled Pavilion, was built by Fatih in 1472 as an outer kiosk of Topkapı Sarayı ¹. Persian in design and decoration — emphasised by its long Persian dated inscription — it is cruciform in plan over two almost identical storeys with chambers at the corners of the cross ¹.

The main-floor porch is an arcade on seventeen columns, the wider central arch round and the others ogive; the deeply recessed entrance alcove is revetted in turquoise and dark blue tile mosaic crowned by a double Persian inscription in cuerda seca, white letters on a dark blue ground ¹. Inside, a cross-shaped salon domed at the crossing opens to two eyvans and corner chambers, all once tiled ². The building now displays the museum's tiles: Seljuk work of the twelfth–fourteenth centuries, the superb mihrab from Ibrahim Bey's mosque at Karaman from the height of the İznik period, then İznik wares through the nineteenth century and Çanakkale plates ³.

• Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), pp. 166–167 (Çinili Köşk).
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