The six-column portico
Red-and-white arches on marble columns - the handsomest part of the mosque, seen from the courtyard without going in.
Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0
Eskişehir is a city of universities, trams and cafés, and it has strikingly little monumental Ottoman architecture; the most important piece of what it does have is here. The Kurşunlu complex was built between 1515 and 1526 for the vizier Çoban Mustafa Pasha at the top of the Odunpazarı hill, a waystation on the Üsküdar–Payas caravan road that ran down towards Syria. The name comes from the lead sheeting on its domes (kurşun is Turkish for lead), which sets up a nice irony: the place has become the capital of a stone as light as foam - meerschaum, 'Eskişehir stone', carved and sold in the complex's own cells. The mosque is a plain square of cut stone under a single dome on an octagonal drum, fronted by a portico on six marble columns whose arches alternate red and white voussoirs - the best-looking thing on the site. Inside it is dim, and the only decoration is hand-painted work renewed in later restorations, so do not expect Bursa or Istanbul. The curious detail is the pair of Mevlevi dervish caps on either side of the mihrab, a memory of the lodge here that became a Mevlevi tekke and stayed one until the lodges were closed in 1925. The architect is unknown, most likely Acem Ali, chief architect before Sinan; Sinan's own name appears in the records only for the caravanserai, which he probably just repaired. Around the mosque, in a U, stand what survives of the original endowment: kitchen, refectory, primary school, caravanserai and lodge. Odunpazarı municipality has brought them back to life: the Meerschaum Museum (since 2008, free) with its carved pipes and jewellery; the Woodwork Museum in the caravanserai (since 2017), where sculptures from the municipality's international wood-carving festival stand where pack animals were once tethered; a small photography museum; and the Atlıhan crafts bazaar, where you watch a carver work the white stone by hand and buy from him directly - the best place in the city for a genuine piece at a fair price. The whole visit runs 30 minutes to an hour. The mosque is free and open outside prayer times; headscarf and covered legs. The courtyard is mostly flat but its terraces are joined by a few steps, so a pushchair needs a hand. Treat it as one stop on a walk through Odunpazarı's painted Ottoman houses, with the Odunpazarı Modern Museum (OMM) a few minutes away. In August the hill is hot and dry at midday, so come in the morning; in winter snow settles on the lead domes and the picture is better still.
Red-and-white arches on marble columns - the handsomest part of the mosque, seen from the courtyard without going in.
Pipes and jewellery carved from the white stone whose finest deposits lie around Eskişehir, free to enter.
Festival sculptures fill the vaulted hall where the caravan animals were once tethered.
Paşa Mahallesi, Kemal Zeytinoğlu Caddesi, Odunpazarı
As a mosque, no: it is small and the interior is dim and plain. As a place, yes: the free museums, the meerschaum carvers' bazaar and the Odunpazarı houses around it make this the best 45 Ottoman minutes in Eskişehir.
Here. In the crafts bazaar inside the complex you watch the carver working the piece in front of you; a genuine one is remarkably light in the hand and looks slightly matt before use, while tourist shops can sell pressed stone dust instead.