On the waterfront at Ortaköy, on the European shore of the strait in İstanbul's Beşiktaş district, the Büyük Mecidiye Camii, usually called Ortaköy Camii, is a neo-baroque mosque that Sultan Abdülmecid had built by the architect Nigoğos Balyan in 1853.
Like other imperial sultans' mosques, it has two parts: the prayer hall and a royal section for the sultan. Its tall, wide windows were arranged to carry the changing light of the strait into the interior. A flight of steps leads up to the building, which is walled in white cut stone and has two minarets with a single balcony each. The walls of the single dome are of pink mosaic; the mihrab is of mosaic and marble, and the finely worked minbar is of marble faced with porphyry.
As a structurally delicate building, the mosque has needed repeated repair: in 1862 and 1866, and again in 1909 after heavy damage in the 1894 earthquake, when the fluted minarets that had fallen were rebuilt plain and other parts renewed. When cracks appeared again in the 1960s, a restoration strengthened the ground and renewed the dome, and the mosque reopened for worship in 1969. A large fire in 1984 left it partly ruined and it was restored once more; a restoration lasting about three years, begun in 2011, was completed in June 2014.
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).
