Şehzade Cami

This guide to Sehzade Cami in Istanbul begins on the 7th of November, 1543, when Suleiman the Magnificent learned that his son Mehmed, the heir he had named against Ottoman tradition, had died at twenty-one. You'll hear how the grieving sultan wept at a temporary grave for two and a half hours, then summoned his chief architect Mimar Sinan - already past fifty - for the most important commission of his career. Listen for how Sinan solved the site's aqueduct problem before you look up at the dome he built to answer a father's grief.