The Muradie Mosque (Xhamia e Muradies) stands in the centre of Vlorë, close to Flag Square and the Independence Monument. It is one of the most important Ottoman monuments in the city and has been protected as a first-category Cultural Monument of Albania since 1948.
Its story begins with a small prayer house that the Halveti sheikh Yakub made from his own home. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who stayed in Vlorë in 1537 during his Corfu campaign, raised it to a Friday mosque. The dedication inscription over the door, copied by the 17th-century traveller Evliya Çelebi and now lost, dates its completion to 1542/43. The design is attributed to the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, though historians treat this with caution: the mosque is not among the works listed in Sinan’s own memoirs.
The building is a single cube-shaped prayer hall crowned by a twelve-sided drum and a dome. Its walls alternate bands of red brick with greenish-grey limestone, and every wall except the entrance front has five windows. A carved-stone minaret rises on a polygonal base, while a porch that once sheltered the entrance survives only as traces in the masonry. Many people in Vlorë still call it Xhamia e Plumbit, the Lead Mosque, after the lead that once covered its dome.
The floods of October 2024 worsened long-standing damage to the dome and walls, and the mosque has been closed to worshippers since. Site preparations for its restoration, designed by Albania’s National Institute of Cultural Heritage in cooperation with TİKA, began in August 2026, so the building may be fenced off or under scaffolding and the interior is closed to visitors. When it reopens, dress modestly, remove your shoes and avoid prayer times. The mosque is about 1.8 km, roughly a 25-minute walk, from the boat-tour meeting point at Hotel Partner & SPA.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons, in gallery order: Dudva (CC0) · Senada Kusi, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Timuspics, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Marcin Konsek / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-4.0 · Rm133, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Arianit, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Arianit, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Visem, CC BY-SA 4.0
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