The biggest mosque in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), with 62 domes and six minarets, the Dr. Suat Günsel Mosque, will open its door to worshippers on Thursday.
Representatives from many Islamic countries, especially from Türkiye and the TRNC, will attend the opening ceremony planned for Friday on the Near East University campus.
The building was built on an area of 30,000 square meters (98,425 feet).
Including those in Türkiye, it is the sixth mosque with six minarets in the region.
It took 10 years to build and was completed with great effort.
It will allow 10,000 people to worship at the same time. The main dome of Suat Günsel Mosque is 36.8 meters high and 23.8 meters in diameter.
The main dome is surrounded by 61 domes of smaller diameters. There are 27 domes and nine semi-domes in the mosque section, and 26 domes in the portico section.
The mosque has six minarets, each of which is 76.2 meters high, and has three balconies. The other two minarets, each 56.45 meters high, have two balconies.
The materials used in the gold-colored stainless steel and chrome-plated domes and minarets were determined by the Turkish Cypriot people through a survey.
Stained glass, designed and prepared by the artists of the Cyprus Museum of Modern Arts in their own workshops, adorns the 104 windows of the mosque.
In the mosque, the dome and minaret finials are completely cast in aluminum and the largest one is 7 meters long. All castings were made in the workshops on the Near East University campus.
A total of 47 chandeliers in the mosque were also designed by the artists of the Cyprus Museum of Modern Arts and produced in their own workshops.
All of the dome and interior decorations of the mosque were completed with oil painting techniques by the artists of the Cyprus Museum of Modern Arts, costing approximately one year of manual labor.
Doors, pulpits and other furniture, which attract attention with their detailed engravings, were designed and produced by Ikas Furniture, a subsidiary of Near East Formation.
As a result of the survey, it was decided by the public to use white stone, unique to Cyprus, in the outer areas of the mosque. The stone workmanship of the mosque bears the signature of Turkish Cypriot craftspeople.
Dr. Suat Günsel Mosque was built entirely with the talents of Turkish Cypriots, from its architectural design, engineering and construction process to the stained glass, chandeliers and finials used, and from the dome and interior decorations to wood and stone workmanship.
In this respect, the mosque will go down in history as the greatest monumental work that the Turkish Cypriots brought to the Island during the TRNC period.
