Set right in Antalya's Republic Square, next to the Alaeddin mosque, THE YIVLI MINARE MOSQUE has become an indisputable historical milestone for the Turkish past. Whether designed as originally belonging to the mosque, or just intended as an orientation watchtower, the minaret is a branch of a religious complex which used to be located within the famous castle of Antalya, together with a mosque and two vaulted tombs.
The eight towering sections of the 90-step flute-shaped minaret are decked with a jigsaw of tiles tinted in shades of turquoise during bright summer days or in cobalt-blue in gloomy afternoons. This lighthouse watches over the six-dome 14th century old Mosque, former Byzantine church which was to become the oldest multi-dome construction of today. The red bricked Yivli Minare Mosque currently houses the Antalya Ethnographic Museum which, for the past 30 years or so, has been exhibiting timeless bits and pieces of the Turkish past life and tradition (garments, embroideries and tapestries, kilims and nomadic tents etc).