Neradje Mosque: A Former Monastery, Mosque, and Music School in Rethymno
Site at a Glance
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Greece
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Ottoman, Venetian
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Mosque
On this page6 sections
History
Before its use as a mosque, the building housed Santa Maria, a Catholic monastery of the Augustinian Order, whose members follow the Rule of Saint Augustine. After the Ottoman Empire, a dynasty-ruled empire centered in Anatolia, conquered Rethymno, the monastery was converted into a mosque. It was named for Gazi Hüseyin Pasha, an Ottoman military commander also known as Deli Hüseyin Pasha. The building was also called the Neradje or Neradjes Mosque; its Turkish name, Narenciye Camii, means “Bitter Orange Mosque.”
The mosque served the Muslim community until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923 and the departure of Crete’s Muslim population in 1924. It then ceased to function as a mosque and became a music school, its present use.
Remains
Architectural features
Building form and openings
In Rethymno’s old town, the rectangular building is constructed of brick and stone and has three semicircular domes. Its Renaissance features, associated with a European cultural and artistic period, include a circular skylight and Renaissance-style windows and a door.
Former church doorway
The doorway has two half-columns on each side, Corinthian-style columns on separate pedestals, and triglyphs, or grooved panels in a classical frieze. Semi-elliptical niches sit between the columns on either side. An arch above the doorway and below its threshold has a large fork-shaped element at its center. The doorway’s design is believed to draw on the work of Sebastiano Serlio, an Italian Renaissance architect and writer on architecture.
Minaret
The single minaret has two balconies and is the tallest structure in the town. Engineer Georgios Daskalakis built it in 1890, during the final years of Ottoman rule in Crete.
