Alcazar (Hamza Bey)

The Hamza Bey Mosque stands at the junction of Egnatia and Venizelou streets, recognizable by its central dome and an arched colonnaded courtyard. Built in fourteen sixty-seven and fourteen sixty-eight, it is the oldest surviving Ottoman place of worship in Thessaloniki. While it began as a prayer house founded by Hafsa Hatun, the daughter of an Ottoman official, the structure grew significantly by the sixteenth century to include a minaret and the courtyard that defines its present layout.