Saint Nicholas Church (Chania)
The St. Nicholas Church ( Greek Ιερός Ναός Αγίου Νικολάου , Italian San Nicolo ), in the Ottoman period and rulers Mosque ( Turkish Hünkar Camii , modern Greek Χιουγκιάρ Τζαμισί Chiounkiar Tzamisi ), or Ibrahim Mosque , at the Platia 1821 in the Greek port city of Chania on Crete is a church built in 1320. It is the only church in Greece that has a bell tower and a minaret .
The Nikolauskirche originally belonged to the Roman Catholic Agios Nikolaos monastery of the Venetians , a Dominican monastery from the year 1205. The architecture corresponded to a basilica with a transept in the Gothic style . In Venetian depictions of the monastery, the church had two bell towers, only one of which has survived today, as well as a double arcade on the north side.
After the conquest of Crete by the Ottomans in 1645, the Ottoman Sultan Ibrahim converted the Venetian church into a mosque and named it after his namesake Abraham . The building was given a minaret instead of a bell tower and became the city's main mosque. The minaret was lined with a cone-shaped roof (pencil tip) made of metal with lead plates and was the highest minaret in the city at 40 meters.
The minaret was not demolished after it was converted into a Greek Orthodox church in 1918. Today it no longer has a conical roof and is therefore only 34 meters high. In 1950 a church tower was rebuilt in a modern way.
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- Beata Kitsiki Panagopoulos: Cistercian and mendicant monasteries in medieval Greece , Chicago 1979, ISBN 0-226-64544-4 , pp. 98-102, with floor plan and illus .
- Andrea Schulte-Peevers, Chris Deliso, Des Hannigan: Crete . lonely planet, S. 43 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 17, 2016]).
Coordinates: 35 ° 30 ′ 59.1 ″ N , 24 ° 1 ′ 19.9 ″ E