On busy Egnatia Street, only steps from Thessaloniki’s Venizelou Metro Station, a doorway leads into more than five centuries of the city’s history. The Hamza Bey Mosque, better known locally as the Alcazar, reopened to visitors on 11 October 2026 after decades during which much of its architecture was hidden behind scaffolding and its interior remained out of public reach. The most remarkable surprise is not the exterior facing the traffic but the courtyard beyond it: an unusual arrangement of arcades, stone columns and architectural fragments from earlier periods of Thessaloniki’s past.

This is one of those places where the city’s history is visible in the building itself. A fifteenth-century prayer house became a larger Ottoman mosque, was repeatedly altered, served as commercial premises and a cinema, and has now returned as a historic monument and cultural venue. Its reopening offers a rare opportunity to understand those changes from inside rather than from the pavement.

A mosque founded in 1467–1468

The Hamza Bey Mosque is the oldest surviving Islamic place of worship purpose-built in Thessaloniki. Its founding inscription dates the original structure to 1467–1468, only a few decades after the city came under Ottoman rule in 1430. The founder was the daughter of the Ottoman military commander Hamza Bey.

It began as a mescit, a smaller neighbourhood prayer house, with a domed square prayer hall and a portico on its northwestern side. In the middle of the sixteenth century, it was enlarged into a mosque with an extended portico and a minaret. Another phase, late in the same century, reorganised the surrounding arcades and added a three-sided western gallery. Together these additions created the enclosed courtyard that makes the Alcazar so distinctive.

The building did not remain frozen in its sixteenth-century form. An inscription records repairs in 1618–1619, and interventions continued while it was used for worship. At a later stage the courtyard was roofed over with tiles carried on a metal framework, changing the experience of this formerly open space.

The courtyard: the Alcazar’s architectural surprise

The courtyard is not perfectly rectangular. Its trapezoidal plan and the changing rhythm of its colonnades reflect different construction stages rather than a single unified design. The arrangement is exceptionally unusual for an Ottoman mosque in the Balkans, with comparisons generally associated with major imperial complexes in Edirne and Istanbul.

Look closely at the capitals and other stonework in the arcades. Apart from the Ottoman capitals of the western gallery, many of these pieces were reused from structures dating to Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. They are known as spolia: older architectural elements incorporated into a later building. Their presence turns a walk around the courtyard into a small survey of the city’s layered past.

Beyond the courtyard is the former prayer hall. The principal interior measures approximately 11.54 metres by 11.54 metres, with a maximum height of 17 metres. The lead-covered hemispherical dome rests on an octagonal drum. These proportions are easier to appreciate once inside, where the central space and its architectural additions can be seen together.