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Şehzade Mosque is a 16th-century Ottoman imperial mosque located in the district of Fatih, on the third hill of Istanbul, Turkey. It was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent as a memorial to his son Şehzade Mehmed who died in 1543. The mosque was one of the earliest and most important works of architect Mimar Sinan and is one of the signature works of Classical Ottoman architecture.
The mausoleum of Mehmed was the first element of the complex to be completed, in 1544. The mosque and the rest of the complex were built between 1545 and 1548. The complex was Sinan's first important imperial commission.
The mosque is entered through a marble-paved colonnaded forecourt with an area equal to that of the mosque itself. The courtyard is bordered by a portico with five domed bays on each side, with arches in alternating pink and white marble. At the center is an ablution fountain (şadırvan), which was a later donation from Sultan Murat IV.
Sinan added domed porticos along the lateral façades of the building (on the northeast and southwest sides) that help to conceal the supporting buttresses of the structure and to give the exterior a greater sense of monumentality.
The twin minarets, attached to the mosque, have two balconies with muqarnas sculpting and interlacing geometric decoration in low relief carved on their shafts. This level of decorative detail on minarets is particular to this mosque and was rarely repeated in later Ottoman mosques. While mosques sponsored by other members of the royal family sometimes had two minarets, the Şehzade Mosque is the only non-sultanic mosque designed by Sinan with two minarets that each had two balconies.
References:Rosenborg Palace was built in the period 1606-34 as Christian IV’s summerhouse just outside the ramparts of Copenhagen. Christian IV was very fond of the palace and often stayed at the castle when he resided in Copenhagen, and it was here that he died in 1648. After his death, the palace passed to his son King Frederik III, who together with his queen, Sophie Amalie, carried out several types of modernisation.
The last king who used the place as a residence was Frederik IV, and around 1720, Rosenborg was abandoned in favor of Frederiksborg Palace.Through the 1700s, considerable art treasures were collected at Rosenborg Castle, among other things items from the estates of deceased royalty and from Christiansborg after the fire there in 1794.
Soon the idea of a museum arose, and that was realised in 1833, which is The Royal Danish Collection’s official year of establishment.