Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque: A look into Istanbul's history and architecture

Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque is located at the intersection of Fatih-Aksaray districts of Istanbul and was built by the order of Sultana Pertevniyal, mother of Sultan Abdülaziz. Construction work began in 1869, and the mosque was finished in 1871. It was designed by the Italian architect Montani. The mosque was designed as a külliye, a complex consisting of a small building in the courtyard of the mosque where an official determined prayer times, a public fountain, tombs, a fountain, a library, and schools. Two minarets consisting of a balcony each were built in the additional building separately from the mosque. The historical mosque is one in which decoration and ornaments have been used the most among other mosques in Istanbul. We see that the influence of the then-Western architecture has been blended with 16th or 17th-century decoration techniques. Gilded hand-drawn ornaments in which the blue color is dominant are elements that come to the fore in architectural design. The interior and exterior walls of the mosque are made of marble ornamented with motifs and inscriptions. The marble mihrab (niche indicating the direction of the Qiblah for prayer) and minbar (a raised platform in the front area of a mosque, from which the imam delivers sermons or speeches) is unimposing.