A dome just under twenty metres across covers the Yıldırım Bayezid Mosque at Mudurnu — a wide span for 1382, when Bayezid I built the mosque, together with a bath and a medrese, while he was still a prince. The dome rests on squinches carried by pointed arches on eight wall piers, over a plan that is a rectangle close to a square. The provincial directorate places the building among the first large-domed works of Ottoman architecture and among the earliest examples of the mosque type carried on eight supports.
The porch in front has three bays and takes the form of a recessed arch like an iwan at the centre, with a small fluted dome at the entrance. The main door sits within a large niche, rectangular and framed by big marble jambs, with curved imposts ornamenting the upper corners. On the north the gallery, carried on eight wooden columns, curves inwards on the axis of the main door. The mihrab niche is many-sided, with a stepped hood.
Almost the whole of the walls is rubble stone, and the eaves mouldings are plain and chamfered. The massive construction left room for very few windows, and the dome drum is taller on the outside than usual. The minaret has a short cylindrical shaft on a square stone base. The mosque has been repaired at various times but remains true to its original form.
Getting there
- Access
- In the centre of Mudurnu.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Bolu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.6 °C in January to 20 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (61 mm) and lightest in August (24 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
