The tomb of Süleyman the Magnificent stands in the garden behind the Süleymaniye Mosque, directly in front of the mihrab wall. Next to it is the tomb of his wife Hürrem Sultan, and the two are visited together.
The garden they sit in covers about six thousand square metres and has eleven gates. Around it stand the seven medreses that gave the quarter its name, the library, the hospital and the soup kitchen — the tomb is one part of a complex the sultan paid for himself.
Mimar Sinan, who built all of it, is not buried among them. His own modest tomb, with an Ottoman inscription over it, is outside the mosque garden beside the İstanbul Mufti's office, a short walk from the two imperial tombs.
The mosque whose mihrab wall the tomb faces is the centre of the whole complex. The district governorate records that its foundation stone was laid by the Şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi and that Sinan himself opened its door at the inauguration. Its central dome is 27.25 metres across and rises 53 metres from the floor, lit by 32 windows; 64 jars, each about 50 centimetres tall, were set into the dome and corners with their mouths facing inwards to strengthen the acoustics. Four minarets of three balconies each stand at the corners of the courtyard.
Four great granite columns carry the dome arches, and each came from somewhere else: one from Alexandria, one from Baalbek, one from Kıztaşı in İstanbul and one from the imperial palace. Sinan likened them to the four caliphs. The coloured windows above the mihrab are the work of İbrahim Usta. In the nineteenth century the engineer Fossati, brought in to repair Hagia Sophia, covered the interior from the piers up to the arches with oil paint, which was later removed with great difficulty, and the minarets, dome and arches were thoroughly repaired by the Directorate of Foundations in 1956.
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).
