Fatih Mosque

This guide to Fatih Mosque in Istanbul follows Sultan Mehmed the Second, who in 1462 ordered the thousand-year-old Church of the Holy Apostles demolished, nine years after conquering Constantinople, then built this mosque and his own tomb on the site once reserved for Constantine the Great. It traces the mosque's construction between 1463 and 1470, and the ritual that brought every Ottoman sultan after him to visit the Conqueror's grave at the start of his reign.