The story of Mosque of Pasha Qasim

At the top of Széchenyi Square stands the symbol of Pécs: a Catholic church that is plainly a mosque. After the Ottomans took Pécs in 1543, Pasha Qasim the Victorious built this mosque, largely from the stones of the medieval Gothic parish church of Saint Bartholomew that stood here. In the 1660s the famous Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi praised the view from it.

When Habsburg and Hungarian troops retook the city, the mosque became a church in 1702, and the Jesuits pulled down the minaret in 1766. It is still one of the largest Ottoman buildings left in Hungary. Look at the great dome and the rows of arched windows, then step inside: Qur'anic inscriptions and Ottoman decoration are visible in the surviving plaster, and there is a mihrab showing the direction of Mecca. The two Turkish basins before the sacristies, now used for holy water, came from the pasha's bath next door.

Its octagonal drum and dome are all that remain of the original bulk.