Selimiye Mosque

Selimiye Mosque in northern Nicosia is a striking example of medieval Gothic-Christian architecture serving for over four hundred years as a congregational mosque. The building was originally constructed in the early thirteenth century by the Lusignan French rulers of Cyprus as the Cathedral of Saint Sophia of Nicosia, and it served as the principal Catholic cathedral of the Kingdom of Cyprus. Following the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1570 under Sultan Selim II — for whom the mosque was renamed in 1954 in honour of the conquest — the building was converted to Islamic religious use. Two slender Ottoman minarets were added to flank the western Gothic facade, the interior was whitewashed to remove the figural Christian frescoes, and a mihrab was cut into the eastern wall to orient prayer toward Mecca. The Gothic vaulted ceiling, pointed arches and tall narrow windows of the cathedral interior remain intact, creating one of the most architecturally distinctive prayer spaces in the eastern Mediterranean. The mosque continues to serve as the principal congregational mosque of northern Nicosia and the seat of the Mufti of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, hosting Friday prayers and major Islamic observances for the city's Turkish Cypriot Muslim community.