Rüstem Pasha Mosque

Finding this mosque is half the adventure. Tucked above the commercial streets near the Spice Bazaar, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque is reached by climbing a narrow staircase between shops — an entrance so modest that most people walk right past it. At the top, the reward is an interior that is arguably the most lavishly tiled mosque in Istanbul, which in this city is saying something.

Every surface is covered in İznik tiles from the golden age of Ottoman ceramics — the 1560s, when the workshops were producing their finest work. The patterns include tulips, carnations, hyacinths, and the rare Armenian bole red (tomato red) that İznik artisans were famous for and that later workshops could never replicate. The quantity and quality of tilework here actually exceeds the Blue Mosque, built fifty years later, because Rüstem Pasha's tiles came from İznik's peak period while the Blue Mosque's were produced during the workshops' decline.

Mimar Sinan designed this mosque around 1563 for Rüstem Pasha, the Grand Vizier and son-in-law of Suleiman the Magnificent. Rüstem was enormously wealthy — partly from political talent, mostly from corruption — and his mosque was essentially a display of purchasing power rendered in ceramic. He died before it was completed in 1563, which means he never actually saw the finished interior.

The elevated position above the street, originally built on a platform of commercial properties that generated rental income to fund the mosque's upkeep, creates an unexpected sense of calm. You climb up from the noise and commerce of the spice district into a jewel-box of tile and light. It is the kind of place that makes you resent every tourist who told you to go to the Blue Mosque instead.