The Suleymaniye Mosque

If the Blue Mosque is the most famous mosque in Istanbul, the Suleymaniye is the one architects and Istanbullus often love most. It was built between 1550 and 1557 for Suleyman the Magnificent, the sultan under whom the Ottoman Empire reached its height, by Mimar Sinan, the greatest of Ottoman architects, and it dominates the skyline above the Golden Horn from its perch on the city's third hill. Inside, the prayer hall is a study in calm and proportion: a great central dome supported by half-domes and four massive piers, walls kept largely white and grey so that the light, the stained glass of the qibla wall and the restrained Iznik tiles around the mihrab can speak. The acoustics were famously engineered, and the scale feels both monumental and human. The mosque was the centerpiece of a vast charitable complex, a kulliye, that included religious colleges, a hospital, a soup kitchen, a hammam, a caravanserai and shops; many of the buildings survive, some still in use, and the old soup kitchen houses a restaurant. In the walled cemetery behind the mosque stand the octagonal tombs of Suleyman himself and of Hurrem Sultan, known in the West as Roxelana, his wife and one of the most powerful women in Ottoman history, and just outside the complex walls is the modest tomb that Sinan designed for himself. From the terrace behind the mosque the view sweeps over the Golden Horn to Galata and the Bosphorus. Entry is free, and because it is further from Sultanahmet, it is far less crowded than the Blue Mosque.

Visiting: the Suleymaniye is a working mosque, so the same rules apply as at the Blue Mosque. Visitors are welcome outside prayer times, with longer closures around the Friday noon prayer; shoes come off at the entrance, shoulders and knees are covered and women cover their hair, with coverings usually available. Allow forty-five minutes to an hour for the mosque, the cemetery and the terrace. It is a fifteen-minute uphill walk from the Grand Bazaar's Beyazit side or the Spice Bazaar, and the climb through the streets of the old market quarter, past craftsmen's workshops and old wooden houses, is part of the pleasure.

The tombs and the terrace are the two things people miss. The tomb of Suleyman, with its painted dome and inlaid ceiling, and the smaller tomb of Hurrem, decorated with some of the finest Iznik tiles in the city, are in the garden on the qibla side, and they are usually quiet. The terrace on the northern side, along the edge of the complex, looks down over the rooftops of Eminonu to the Golden Horn and Galata, and at sunset, as the call to prayer begins, it is one of the most beautiful places in Istanbul. For a meal, the street of bean restaurants along the old college building, serving the classic Istanbul dish of white beans and rice, is an inexpensive local institution.

Why it matters: Sinan built or designed hundreds of buildings across the empire, but the Suleymaniye and the Selimiye in Edirne are his greatest works, and seeing the Suleymaniye explains Istanbul's skyline, which he shaped more than anyone. Compare it with the Blue Mosque, built half a century later by his pupil: the Suleymaniye is more restrained and more perfectly balanced, and many find it more moving. If you have time for a third imperial mosque, the small Rustem Pasha Mosque nearby, also by Sinan, has the most dazzling tiles of all.