TIRANA, Feb 24 /ATA/ – King Mosque, also known as Sultan’s Mosque, one of the principal houses of worship and religious sites in the museum city of Berat, ranks among the oldest and most frequented mosques in Albania.
Part of the Islamic Centre complex, the mosque was commissioned by Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II at the end of the 15th century. The mosque was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 as part of Historic Centres of Berat and Gjirokastra.
The structure comprises a prayer hall, a portico and a minaret. The interior of the prayer hall is distinguished by a monumental painted wooden ceiling, a spacious two-level gallery supported by wooden columns, a mihrab set into the qibla wall and a minbar positioned to its right, forming the core of the mosque’s decorative composition.
A central ceiling rosette bears inscriptions of Quran verses, while a frieze running below the ceiling displays the 99 Beautiful Names of God in Islamic tradition.
An open portico precedes the prayer hall. Added in the late 18th century by master builder Dush Barka, it features its own ceiling and an additional mihrab on the northern wall to accommodate overflow worshippers. The portico is framed by an arcade resting on stone columns.
The upper section of the minaret has been reconstructed in recent years. Its base, built using the cloisonné masonry technique, dates to the mosque’s original 15th-century construction and remains one of its earliest surviving architectural elements.
Externally, the mosque is fully plastered, with painted detailing designed to imitate stone masonry.
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