The small white mosque standing almost in the Bosphorus with a suspension bridge arching directly above it is the Buyuk Mecidiye Camii, built for Sultan Abdulmecid I and carrying a foundation inscription dated 1854. It sits on reclaimed land at the north end of Ortakoy square, and it was designed by the Balyan family, the Armenian dynasty of imperial architects responsible for most of the nineteenth century Bosphorus palaces.
It is the most photographed building on the strait and one of the few that genuinely reads better from a boat than from the shore, because the water is where its front elevation faces.
The chronology
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 1721 | A mescid built on the site by Mahmud Aga, son in law of the Grand Vizier. Sources disagree on the date and on whether it was destroyed in the Patrona Halil uprising around 1730. |
| 1740s | Probably renewed, with a single balcony minaret and an imperial loge. |
| Mid 1850s | The present mosque built for Abdulmecid I. The foundation inscription is dated 1854 and sources give construction dates ranging from 1853 to 1856. |
| 1862 and 1866 | Repaired. |
| 1894 | Badly damaged in the earthquake. |
| 1909 | Repaired. The collapsed fluted minarets were rebuilt without their fluting. |
| 1960s | Ground reinforced and the dome renewed. Reopened for worship in 1969. |
| 1984 | Major fire, followed by another restoration. |
| 30 October 1973 | The first Bosphorus bridge opens directly behind and above it. |
| 2011 to 2014 | Emergency restoration by the foundations authority. Reopened 6 June 2014. |
The construction date is genuinely unsettled. The inscription above the entrance, composed by Ziver Pasa, gives 1270 in the Islamic calendar, corresponding to 1854, and names Abdulmecid. Turkish religious scholarship follows that. Other sources give 1853, 1856, or 1848 to 1855. The safe formulation is that it carries an 1854 inscription and was completed in the mid 1850s.
Who designed it
The Balyans, though which of them is disputed. Turkish religious scholarship and the national heritage inventory name Nigogos Balyan alone. The tourism ministry’s own portal names both Nigogos and his father Garabet Amira Balyan, and notes the same family designed Dolmabahce Palace fifteen minutes down the shore.
The style is described in Turkish sources as neo baroque, which is the standard term. Anglophone scholarship prefers eclectic, and that is more accurate to what is actually there. The stone carving is baroque and rococo, the mihrab niche is Empire, and the imperial pavilion attached to it is in a plainer neoclassical idiom. It is a building assembled from several European vocabularies at once, which is exactly what the 1850s Ottoman court was doing.
What is inside, and who wrote it
One detail elevates this above the other shoreline mosques. Some of the calligraphy is by the sultan himself. The panels naming the four rightly guided caliphs and the declaration of faith above the minbar are the work of Abdulmecid I. The remainder is by Ali Haydar Bey.
The prayer hall is a square of roughly 12.25 metres a side, domed on pendentives. Tall round arched windows in two tiers on three sides push a great deal of light into a small room, which is the point of the design and the reason it feels larger inside than its footprint suggests.
The mihrab and minbar are marble and porphyry. The dome and pendentives carry painted trompe l’oeil landscapes, which is an unusual thing to find in a mosque and belongs to the same European borrowing as the architecture. The interior walls are finished in pink stone imitation plaster streaked red and white.
Attached to the prayer hall is a two storey imperial pavilion on a U plan, reached by a double elliptical staircase, where the sultan would arrive and wait before prayer. Palaces and mosques on this shore were reached by boat, and the arrangement follows from that.
The 2011 to 2014 restoration
Worth setting out because the reason for it is routinely misreported.
The trigger was falling plaster, not subsidence. Cement render was coming off the building onto the congregation. The underlying cause was heavy damp and salt from the shoreline position, made worse by earlier restorations that had used cement based materials on a building that needed lime. The foundation and ground reinforcement work belongs to the 1960s campaign, not this one.
The foundations authority declared an emergency restoration on the basis of a scientific board report. A team of around fifty specialists stripped every bit of cement render and replaced it with horasan lime plaster, replaced all the main lead roofing, restored the hand painted decoration in the main dome, and removed the reinforced concrete floor slabs from both the prayer hall and the imperial pavilion, replacing them with timber framing. Stone blocks weighing from 500 kilograms to over a tonne were re-carved with their original motifs.
It took about three years and cost somewhere between six and seven million lira at 2014 prices, sources differing. It reopened on Friday 6 June 2014.
What to look for from the water
The mosque sits on the European shore just before the first bridge, heading north. Coming back it is on the opposite side.
The composition itself. A small white nineteenth century mosque with two slender minarets, and a 1,560 metre suspension bridge passing overhead. The bridge opened on 30 October 1973, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic, with a span between towers of 1,074 metres. Nothing about the two was designed together and the accidental result is the defining image of modern Istanbul.
The waterline. The mosque stands on reclaimed land and appears from a boat to be sitting in the strait rather than beside it. That effect only works from the water. From the square behind, it looks like a normal shoreline building.
The two tiers of windows. Visible from outside as the reason the building reads as glassy rather than solid, unusual for a mosque of its period.
The minarets. Note that they are unfluted. They were fluted until the 1894 earthquake brought them down, and the 1909 repair rebuilt them plain.
The pier beside it. Ortakoy has been a working ferry pier for a long time. The original stood slightly north of the mosque, a new one was built south of it on the present site in 1909, and the current structure opened on 23 March 2002.
How this fits into the wider sequence of shoreline buildings is covered in the guide to Bosphorus palaces from the water.
Visiting it on land
It is a working mosque and entry is free. There is no ticket, no ticketing authority lists it, and it is not part of any museum pass.
Opening hours are not formally published anywhere. No official body publishes visiting times, and the hours that circulate on travel sites are not sourced to anyone. What is reliable is the underlying pattern. Visiting is arranged around the five daily prayers, visitors wait outside during prayer, and the mosque fills for Friday midday prayer when non worshippers should not go in. Check on arrival rather than planning around a published time.
Dress as at any working mosque. Shoulders and knees covered, head covering for women, shoes off at the entrance.
The square behind it
Ortakoy Iskele Meydani is a small waterfront square that gets extremely busy at weekends, and two things about it are worth knowing.
The kumpir stalls are the local institution. Baked potatoes split and filled with an alarming number of toppings, sold from a row of premises on the square, alongside waffle stands. This is a genuine Istanbul weekend ritual rather than a tourist invention. It is also an area the district authority inspects, and enforcement actions in recent years have covered aggressive touting, hygiene and noise, so choosing a busy place with visible turnover is sensible.
There are two different markets and they get confused constantly. Craft and souvenir stalls fill the lanes behind the square, busiest at weekends. Separately, a much larger clothing and home textile market, the Ortakoy Sosyete Pazari, sets up on Thursdays on Dereboyu Caddesi, inland and uphill from the shore. They are not the same thing and they are not in the same place.
Getting there by land, and one common error
There is no metro station at Ortakoy, Besiktas or Kabatas. A good deal of travel writing tells people to take the metro, and it is wrong. The nearest operating metro station is on the M7 line at Yildiz, roughly a kilometre and a half away and uphill. The M7 extension that will add Besiktas and Kabatas stations is still under construction with no published opening date.
What works is buses along the shore road, which connect Ortakoy to Kabatas for the T1 tram and the funicular, and to the Besiktas ferry pier. Ortakoy is also an operating ferry pier in its own right. And it is a walk of about two kilometres along the water from Besiktas, which is pleasant in either direction.
When the light is right
The mosque faces roughly east across the strait, so morning sun lands on its front elevation and the afternoon puts it into shade against a bright sky.
For the classic shot from the water, morning is better for the building and evening is better for the composition, since the mosque is floodlit after dark and the bridge lighting comes on at around the same time. Blue hour, the half hour after sunset, is when the two balance. A sunset cruise catches that transition on this stretch of shoreline.
One local caution. This is where the strait narrows toward the first bridge and the current runs hard, so boats move through faster than passengers expect. Have the camera ready before Ciragan rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
When was Ortakoy Mosque built?
It carries a foundation inscription dated 1854 and was completed in the mid 1850s. Sources give construction dates ranging from 1853 to 1856, so no single year should be stated flatly. An earlier mosque stood on the site from around 1721.
Who built Ortakoy Mosque?
It was commissioned by Sultan Abdulmecid I and designed by the Balyan family. Turkish religious scholarship names Nigogos Balyan alone, while the tourism ministry names both Nigogos and his father Garabet Amira Balyan. The same family designed Dolmabahce Palace.
Can you go inside Ortakoy Mosque?
Yes, free of charge, outside prayer times. It is a working mosque with no ticket and no published visiting hours, so timing is arranged around the five daily prayers. Avoid Friday midday, when it fills for congregational prayer.
Why is Ortakoy Mosque so photographed?
Because of the accidental composition. A small white 1850s mosque standing on reclaimed land at the water’s edge, with a 1,560 metre suspension bridge from 1973 arching directly above and behind it. Neither was designed with the other in mind.
What is the bridge behind Ortakoy Mosque?
The first Bosphorus bridge, opened on 30 October 1973 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic. It runs 1,560 metres in total with 1,074 metres between the towers, and now carries over 190,000 vehicles a day. It was renamed in late July 2016.
Is there a metro to Ortakoy?
No, and this is a common error in travel guides. There is no metro station at Ortakoy, Besiktas or Kabatas. The nearest operating one is M7 Yildiz, about a kilometre and a half away uphill. Use the shore buses, the ferry, or walk from Besiktas.
What is kumpir?
A baked potato split open, mashed with butter and cheese and then loaded with a long list of toppings, sold from a row of stalls on Ortakoy square. It is a weekend institution among Istanbul residents rather than a visitor invention, and the square is where the city goes to eat it.
Can you see Ortakoy Mosque from a Bosphorus cruise?
Yes, and this is the best view of it. Every sightseeing sailing passes it on the European side just before the first bridge, where the mosque appears to sit in the water rather than beside it. That effect only works from a boat. The daytime cruise covers this stretch.
