The Green Mosque free photo download

Its sumptuous decoration makes the Green Mosque, a kilometer east of the city center of Bursa, one of the great master works of Ottoman religous architecture. It was built by Mehmet I between 1419 and 1423 on the site of an earlier Byzantine church. The original minarets, clad with green tiles, were destroyed in an earthquake in 1855, as was the marble vestibule. The doorway with its stalactitic niche, however, is well preserved. On either side of the entrance to the central hall are beautiful tiled niches, above which are the Sultan's loge and the women's loges, screened by grilles. In the main hall the bases of the walls are covered with the bluish-green tiles from which the mosque gets its name, and above this an inscription around the walls