Medrese Mosque

The Medrese Mosque, located in southern Veria, was built around 1850 on the foundations of the Musa Celebi Mosque and is the largest and best-preserved of the city’s two mosques, retaining its minaret intact.

The area originally housed a pre-Christian altar and a Byzantine church dedicated to the Holy Apostles. This church was converted into a mosque between 1410 and 1413, and was demolished in 1850 to make way for the current mosque, also known as the Tsiai-Aik Mosque or Medrese Mosque. The word “medrese” or “mendere” is Arabic and means religious school (madrasa).

There is a record stating that next to the mosque there was a long two-story building near a row of large cypress trees, which functioned as a medrese and was destroyed by fire in 1924.