Grand Mosque of Bursa

Much like Istanbul, the city of Bursa is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It is the fourth largest city in the country and it is best known to be the birth place of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Bursa is the first major capital city of empire. It is the first because eventually the capital was moved to different places depending on how large the empire was. Since it is the birth place of the empire, you can expect that there would be several important structures here in the city. Perhaps the most important one would be the Grand Mosque of Bursa.

The Grand Mosque of Bursa is built in the center of the old city. Currently, it is a very busy and crowded area. It was actually hard to photograph the building unless you are far away. Like all the other mosques that I have visited, The Grand Mosque is open to the public including tourists. However, to enter the mosque one would need to remove their footwear. There is the usual shelves where you can leave your shoes but I chose to bring them with me.

The mosque is noted for its twenty domes but it may not be that obvious from the inside. You can tell that this mosque was built in a totally different time because it is different from the more well known mosques in the country. The architecture itself is markedly different because of the lack of a central dome which these days are one of the defining characteristics of a mosque. Compared to the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, the Grand Mosque of Bursa is rather modest as far as interiors are concerned. There are several prominent calligraphy on display here and apparently some were written by famous people who I don’t know.

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