Α noted mosque-turned museum in the northern city of Thessaloniki, built a decade before the end of Ottoman rule in most of the Balkans, will be opened for Muslim prayers on April 10 to coincide with the conclusion of Ramadan fast, called Eid_al-Fitr or Bayram in Turkey.
The historic Yeni Mosque, of Cami, was built in 1902 by Italian architect Vitaliano Poselli for the cosmopolitan metropolis’ Dönmeh community, crypto-Jewish converts to Islam.
After the 1923 population exchange between Greece and the new Turkish republic, the building served as a temporary shelter for Greek refugees fleeing Anatolia. It was then used to house Thessaloniki’s archaeological museum, beginning in 1925, and into the 1960s.
The decision to allow the prayer service was taken by the education ministry’s general secretariat of religious affairs, while the prayer leader, or Imam, will be selected by the Greek state.
The building, combining features of traditional Islamic architecture with the latest trends at the dawn of the 20th century, today serves as an exhibition center.
Yeni Cami’s courtyard today hosts a varied collection of marble sculptures dating to the Roman and early Christian periods, such as sarcophagi, funerary sculptures, reliefs and funerary stelae.
