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The proportions within are just as breathtaking. Semidomes have given place to eight piers that open up the interior. One appreciates that this building (1569-74) is brother to the masterpieces of the High Renaissance. The key to this relationship is shared mathematics, but here, also, inventiveness finds its apogee. I usually can persuade an officer of the mosque to allow me to mount the central singing gallery, where his few notes from the call to prayer prove the acoustics are without reproach. Under the gallery is a marble fountain in a pool, the navel of the building, symbolic of the source of life.

The tiles in this mosque hug the windows of the mihrab apse where the imam leads the faithful in prayer. They are panels of the richest color and brilliant execution. In the 1570s the potteries at Iznik (Nicaea) reached a perfection that achieved a dazzling range of colors and unblemished white grounds. The reds, in particular, were the envy of European ceramicists. There are unique designs set into the shoulders of the many arches, but the glory is in the royal box (hünkar mahfili). Having asked the officer of the mosque for permission to see them, I make a modest donation of about two dollars and follow the guide up the stairs in the wall. Apart from the looted panel now in the Hermitage, all the tiles are still there and of pristine beauty, with imaginative floral designs. The center panel of the mihrab is formed of inlaid wooden shutters that open magically so that sultans, on their knees, could look out on nothing but the heavens.

There is a small museum in the former teaching complex of this mosque, but the energetic should press on for a little less than a mile up the hill to the mosque of Murad II, father of Mehmet the Conqueror, which was once the center of a Mevlevi dervish convent. The highly intellectual and esthetic order is still famous for the mystical dance in which seven participants slowly gyrate like spheres, each with one hand pointing to heaven and the other to earth. Sadly, all but the mosque is gone, and the building is often shut at the whim of the imam. But the view across the plain to the foothills of Bulgaria is still fine, and a mood of medieval fantasy survives.

Returning down the hill to the center of town, I visit the bazaar below the Selim II mosque, where stout country boots, an Edirne specialty, are sold. The city is also known for quality soaps, some modeled into animals to amuse children. Beyond that visitors will find little that is not available in Istanbul. But the opening price, before bargaining begins, is likely to be much lower.

Outside the bazaars are numerous open-air cafés, one of which has tables on the slope beneath the Selim II mosque. Although this café is cooled by a pool sparkling with jets of water, the umbrellas over the tables are sometimes not enough and it is best to have a hot or iced tea in one of the tree-shaded cafés along the main street; one of my favorites is the café in the piazza formed by the caravansary and the Old Mosque (Eski Cami). The Eski Cami has an interesting independent minaret of monumental proportions built of brick. Although the mosque is under repair, you can still see the astonishingly large inscriptions on the walls, added in the nineteenth century. The mosque itself dates from around 1400, but there is a cocky little later brother built of stone, added at the far corner of the portico.

The Turks have always been a practical people who erect what they need where they can without attempting to imitate an older style. Nowhere does this work better than at the nearby Üç Şerefeli Cami (the Mosque of the Three Balconies, used by the muezzins who make the call to prayer). In the sixteenth century—the time of Süleyman the Magnificent—there was not just one singer for each balcony but four, at each of the cardinal points. For this mosque, which was the royal mosque of Murad II, the first two minarets were built at the corners where mosque and courtyard meet. This is the usual position in a sultan