At a glance
- Era
- The Gunpowder Empires
- Region
- Anatolia
- Identifiers
- Wikidata
- Review
- Draft Completeness 3/5 · Help complete it
Summary
The Medrese of Rüstem Pasha was built by grand vezir Rüstem Pasha on the slope of the Second Hill leading down to the Golden Horn; Sinan designed it and its historic inscription records completion in A.H. 957 (1550–1) 1.
A unique plan
Its plan is unique for a medrese: the courtyard is octagonal, ringed by a columned portico of twenty-four domes with a şadırvan, and the cells behind are octagonally arranged too — but the exterior is made square by filling the corners with auxiliary rooms including baths and lavatories; the lecture hall is a large domed room projecting from the square like a great apse 1.
For young visitors
Sinan's only octagonal-courtyard college — a square box hiding a perfect octagon inside.
Curatorial notes
- Source read: Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011), p. 256 (Medrese of Rüstem Pasha).
- Existing wikidata-import stub completed and upgraded in this batch.
Sources
- John Freely, A History of Ottoman Architecture (2011) , p.256
- Tarikh al-Islam — Hasan Ibrahim Hasan
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Rüstem Pasha Medrese, Istanbul”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/building/rustem-pasha-medrese/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-23.