Story
The story of Selimiye Mosque
You are standing before the largest and oldest surviving Gothic church in Cyprus, today the Selimiye Mosque. Its interior measures 66 by 21 metres, and it may have been the largest church built in the Eastern Mediterranean in a whole millennium. The foundation stone is dated to 1209; earthquakes in 1267 and 1303 damaged it, and the cathedral was finally consecrated in 1326 with a great celebration.
Here the Lusignan kings of Cyprus were crowned. During the Ottoman siege of 1570 many people took refuge inside. When the city fell on 9 September, the bishop of Paphos, Francesco Contarini, gave the last Christian sermon here, and he was killed with others when soldiers broke in.
On 15 September the first Friday prayer was held, attended by the commander Lala Mustafa Pasha, and that same year two minarets were added. In 1954 it was renamed Selimiye, in honour of Sultan Selim II, and today it can hold 2,500 worshippers.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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