Keeping It Within the Family, 1862–1908 In the same years, another Italian architect, Vitaliano Poselli ( 1838 –
1918 ), Yakubi Dönme Mayor Hamdi Bey’s municipal builder, was hired to
build the New Mosque (fig. 1. 3 ), fifteen to twenty minutes’ walk from the
Kapancı villas. It was to be a Muslim house of worship like no other. Poselli
had the masons add a plaque of white marble inscribed “Mimar Vitaliano
Poselli” in the modified Ottoman Arabic script, with “Architetto” in Ital-
ian beneath it, reflecting the New Mosque’s mix of western European and
Ottoman styles. In a photograph of the New Mosque’s 1904 inaugura-
tion, a large crowd of men look on in approval, among them Third Army
Field Marshall Hajji Mehmet Hayri Pasha, who owned a mansion across
the street and had endowed the mosque. Major Ali Salhi, director of the
Imperial Military Preparatory School, and Hajji Agha of Serres, a former
director general of the Post and Telegraph Department, who had both
also made contributions to the work, are there as well. The architecture
of the New Mosque is strikingly innovative.^46 The design was the peak of
daring architectural eclecticism in the city, bringing together baroque and
Ottoman mosque styles, Moorish flourishes and the modern decorative
figure 1.3 The New Mosque, Thessaloníki. Photo by author.