Fethiye Tzami Mosque

The Fethiye Mosque stands on the eastern side of the old Venetian harbour in Nafpaktos, a town on the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth in western Greece. It was built in 1499, on the orders of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II, immediately after Ottoman forces captured the town from the Republic of Venice that same year — a link commemorated in its name, since fetih means "conquest" in Turkish. In its early years it was also known as the Bayezid-i Veli Mosque, after its founder.

For more than three centuries the mosque served as the town's main place of Muslim worship. It fell out of use in the 1820s, during the upheaval of the Greek War of Independence, when the last mosques of Nafpaktos were closed. The building's single large dome remains its most distinctive feature, still visible from the harbour today.

The restored building now functions as an exhibition hall, opening mainly for occasional art shows and cultural events, and is one of the more striking landmarks along Nafpaktos's waterfront promenade. Travellers chartering a gulet in Greece and calling at Nafpaktos can combine a walk past the old Venetian fortifications with a look at this rare surviving trace of the town's Ottoman past.