Church of Saint Nicholas

The Church of Saint Nicholas is a Greek Orthodox church located in the Splanzia square in the town of Chania, on the island of Crete. It is dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Originally a Roman Catholic church, it was converted into a mosque during the Ottoman period and then back into a church in the twentieth century. It is the only building in Greece to possess both a bell tower and a minaret.

The church was built around 1320 by the Dominican brotherhood of Candia as a Roman Catholic cathedral. When Crete fell to the Ottoman Turks in the seventeenth century, the church was converted into a mosque known as the Hünkar Mosque (“Emperor’s Mosque”), in honour of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Imbraim. Accordingly, Splanzia became the Muslim quarter of the town.