Iskele Mosque

This guide to Iskele Mosque starts on the Forty Steps, an eleventh-century Venetian stairway down to Antalya's old harbour, at the bottom of which stands the smallest mosque in the city's history. It traces the hexagonal pavilion's 1903 construction by two local patrons, on a site scholars believe held an earlier Seljuk-period mosque, and what makes it unlike almost any other mosque you'll encounter: a living spring welling up beneath the prayer hall itself. For centuries this tiny structure has served the dock workers, fishermen and ferrymen whose lives ran on the tides.