Grand Mosque (Büyük Camii), Larnaca

The minaret of this mosque and Larnaca Castle stand side by side and together make a familiar seafront view. Yet the mosque stands on the site of a Latin church, traditionally said to have been dedicated to Saint Catherine. The church portal survives.

Larnaca was one of the first places to fall to the Ottomans, in 1570, but the earliest documentary mention of the mosque dates only from 1747, when the governor Bekir Pasha, then building the town’s water supply, specified that the public fountain at the mosque should receive water from the Kamares Aqueduct. The fountain still stands by its wall.

The mosque is on two levels: the ablution area is below, and worshippers climb an outside stair to the prayer hall. A small cemetery survives next to it.

This was the main mosque of the old Turkish quarter of Skala, south of the castle. In 1974–75 its Turkish Cypriots moved north to Trikomo and renamed it İskele, the Turkish form of Skala. Today the mosque serves Muslims living in Larnaca, many of them from the Middle East.