Taht El Kale Mosque

The Taht El Kale Mosque is located in Nicosia’s homonymous district and within the city’s walls.

A mosque built in 1826 by the Ottoman commander Es Sayid Mehmet Agha, the Taht El Kale Mosque has a dome, three arches on the front and two arches at the sides. On the left side there is the minaret that broke in 1936 and was rebuilt in 1948, while three Gothic arches support the roof of this small building.

Taht El Kale means a wooden castle and its name comes from the large wooden tower that once stood near the Famagusta Gate. From this tower, after all, was named the entire area around the mosque.

The redevelopment of part of the Taht el Kale parish from the municipality of Nicosia in 2015, redefined the historical center of the city, making it into a cultural hub with the operation of the Famagusta Gate, the Faros Foundation, the Center for Fine Arts and Research of the Kostas and Rita Severi Foundation and other cultural sites.

This district with the beautiful houses that display elements of Ottoman architecture, the “tahtakalas” for the locals, has traditionally been one of the largest mixed neighborhoods in the city, but today the only building that reminds of the Greek Cypriots coexistence with the Turkish Cypriots is the Taht El Kale Mosque. Around the 1950s there was a small cemetery here and, much earlier, a fountain.