Another walk in the Historical part

Tuesday we had another walk in the historical part of Istanbul. This time we started at the Ramazan Efendi Mosque in the center of the Kocamustafapaşa area, in Fatih. The Ramazan Efendi Mosque is attached to the complex which was used to be a Derwish Lodge. You can find several tombes with important derwishes buried there.
Another Dewish shrine and pilgrimage site is the Kocamustafapaşa Mosque. Important leaders of the Hyacinth Derwish order are buried on this complex. It is a very interesting place to go to, relax and drink some tea. You can experience how people use these shrines to ask for blessings or pray as a part of their daily life. However you would never see people pray the same way as they would do in mosques because it’s forbidden to do so. The Mosque on the complex used to be a Byzantine church. Not only the exterior shows typical features of a church, also in the interior you still can clearly see that it used to be a church. For example if you pay attention to the decoration you would find that there are still some crucifixes visible although they tried their best to take most of them out. And of course the interior architecture is focused on the north-south line with the choir as the most important part. In the mosque as it is now, there is of course a focus on the east-west line with its major focus to the east on the mihrab wall; the direction of Mecca.
Walking further to the direction of the Sea of Marmara we reached a very nice area with lots of restaurants, the famous Develi restaurant is also located there. It’s said the best kebab in town in served in the Develi restaurant. Not just the restaurants are worth to pay a visit to this area, also the small streets in the residential part are very nice to see. Here’s a photo impression:
How to get there: from Taksim you can take a dolmus to Kocamustafapaşa, but we decided to take the tramvay leaving from Kabataş to Fındıkzade. Once you leave Fındıkzade take the big street called Kızılelma Cad. on your left. Than take the Hekimoğlu Ali Paşa Cad. to the right where it is very close to the Vidin Cad. It took us about 15 min. to walk from Fındıkzade to the mosque.