COLORFUL MOSQUE

This mosque (Šarena Džamija) is officially named after Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (Sulejmanija Džamija). It was built in 1817 on the site of two previous mosques of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The building is rectangular in shape (21.76 × 16 m) and is the center of the old sharia, a commercial and Islamic complex that was located at the foot of the fortress. It owes its current name to its rich interior and exterior decoration dating from 1815 consisting of colorful plant motifs (cypresses, plum trees, fleur-de-lis, tulips, lilacs, stylized buds, etc.), clearly visible on the upper parts of the façade. These paintings, renovated in 2019, seem exceptional today. They were however the standard of Ottoman mosques until the early nineteenth century. The building is now among the very few mosques "colored" Balkan, with the mosque Et'hem Bey of Tirana (Albania) and the mosque Painted Tetovo (Northern Macedonia). Another particular element, the arcades of the first floor, also colored, were designed in 1757 to house a covered textile market (bezistan or bedestan) with ten stores placed under the prayer hall to house rich fabrics and precious goods. During the reconstruction of 1816-1817, the stores were preserved, but they have now ceased to function. With this architecture mixing so intimately the profane and the sacred, it is the only mosque of this type that has survived in the country.