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The Üç Şerefeli Mosque was commissioned by Ottoman sultan Murad II, and built between 1438 and 1447. When first built the dome was the largest in any Ottoman building. The mosque was severely damaged by fire in 1732 and by an earthquake in 1748 but was repaired on the order of Mahmut I.
The Üç Şerefeli Mosque marked a major shift in mosque design. Unlike earlier mosques, it features a nearly square layout split between a domed prayer hall and a courtyard with a central fountain, surrounded by arcades.
Its massive central dome (24-27 meters wide) was the largest in Ottoman architecture at the time, and the mosque's four minarets, especially the southwestern one with three balconies, gave it its name ('Three-Balconied Mosque'). The tall minarets and cascading domes hint at the style of later imperial mosques.
Heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1752, it was partially rebuilt. The mosque’s design is seen as a bridge between early Ottoman styles and the classical architecture that followed, combining earlier Anatolian elements into one unified, innovative plan.
The two blue and turquoise underglaze-painted tile panels in the tympana of the windows were probably produced by the same group of tilemakers who had decorated the Yeşil Mosque (1419–21) in Bursa. The running pattern of the Chinese influenced floral border tiles is similar to those in the small Muradiye Mosque in Edirne.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.