Divrigi Great Mosque and Hospital

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Great Mosque And Hospital Of Divrigi, 1985); A Mengujekid Mosque And Adjoining Hospital Of 1228 1229 With Four Monumental Carved Stone Portals · Divrigi, Sivas

In 1228 a minor Anatolian dynasty in a remote mountain town built a mosque, and the ruler's wife built a hospital against the side of it, and between them they produced some of the strangest and finest stone carving in the medieval world. The four portals of Divrigi are cut so deeply that the ornament stands almost free of the wall: vast interlaced flowers, palmettes and geometry at a scale and a depth found on no other Islamic building, each portal in a different idiom as though the masons were arguing with each other. UNESCO inscribed it in 1985, among the very first Turkish sites listed. Inside, the mosque's vaulting changes from bay to bay and the hospital has a domed court with a carved pool. It sits in a small iron-mining town a long way from anywhere, which is why so few people have seen it, and it has just been through a restoration that specialists have argued about at length ever since.

Divrigi Ulu Camii, Divrigi, Sivas, Divrigi, Sivas, Turkiye

Open daily as a working mosque and free; the hospital half is entered from the same complex and keeps its own daytime hours. Tourist visiting pauses around the five daily prayers and for longer at Friday midday. Divrigi is remote and the road in is long; check locally in winter, when snow is heavy. A major restoration completed recently and has been much argued over.

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