Yeşil Medrese

Yeşil Medrese, the Green Madrasa, is one of two theological colleges built within the Yeşil complex that Ottoman Sultan Mehmed I commissioned on a hillside above Bursa, with construction dated to around 1419 to 1424 under the vizier and architect Hacı İvaz Paşa. The madrasa is arranged around a large central courtyard, entered through a recessed portal on its north side, with an arcade running along three sides partly supported by reused Byzantine columns and capitals. Its south side holds a large domed study hall reached by two staircases, where panels of blue and green tilework decorate the window surrounds and interior, giving the building its popular name. The madrasa belongs to the wider Yeşil complex, which also includes the famed Green Mosque, the mausoleum of Mehmed I, a second madrasa, a soup kitchen, baths, a children's school, and a former palace, together forming one of the key monuments of early Ottoman Bursa.