Mustafa Paşa was a vizier under Süleyman the Magnificent and Selim II, and he is called Lala because he had been Selim's tutor. The municipality places him in the family of Sokollu Mehmed Paşa.
His tomb is Sinan's work and was built while he was still alive. It is an open tomb: square in plan, with four columns at the corners carrying pointed arches and a dome above them, so the building is a canopy rather than a closed room.
A verse in the hand of the calligrapher Hamid Efendi runs round the inside of the dome, and the pasha's marble sarcophagus, carved with a turban and an inscription, stands beneath it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İstanbul as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.8 °C in January to 24.7 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (99 mm) and lightest in July (22 mm). Long-term means for 1950-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
