Nuruosmaniye Mosque

The Nuruosmaniye Mosque sits at the entrance to the Grand Bazaar, distinguished by its unusual horseshoe-shaped courtyard and a dome that rises twenty-five meters in diameter. Construction of the building began in seventeen forty-nine under Sultan Mahmud the First, but the sultan died before the project was finished. His successor, Sultan Osman the Third, completed the mosque in seventeen fifty-five, giving it the name Nuruosmaniye, or the Light of Osman.