Medrese Mosque

 The Medrese Mosque, on the south side of Veria, is one of the two representative examples of Ottoman mosque architecture left in Veria, which is the largest and most complete as it preserves its minaret intact.

It was built around 1850 on the foundations of the mosque of Musa Tselebi. It is located on Markou Botsari Street, near Orologiou Square and next to the Step of the Apostle Paul, with which it had a common precinct where sacred, spiritual discussions took place.

In the place of the present mosque there was a pre-Christian altar and then during the Byzantine times the church of the Holy Apostles Paul and Peter or Paul. Between the marble elbows on the outside of the three-sided base of the minaret, there is one in a prominent position with two syllables of ancient Greek inscription: "ΒΩ ... ΕΥΝ ...". The researchers conclude that in this place there was an ancient Greek altar dedicated to Eunomia. According to the Muslim traveler Evliya Tselebi, this temple was turned into a mosque by Musa Tselebi, son of Keravnos Khan, when he conquered Veria around 1410-1413.

This mosque was demolished around 1850 and with its own and other materials was built the mosque that survives today, known as the Chiai-aik Mosque, or the Mosque of the Musala district, or the mosque of Medrese. The word “medrese” is Arabic and means school. There is a testimony that states that next to the mosque there was an elongated two-story building near a row of large cypress trees, which functioned as a mistress and which burned down in 1924.