Gaza - Landmarks

Landmarks

Landmarks in Gaza include the Great Mosque in the Old City. Originally a pagan temple, it was consecrated a Greek Orthodox church by the Byzantines, then a mosque in the 8th century by the Arabs. The Crusaders transformed it into a church, but it was reestablished as a mosque soon after Gaza's reconquest by the Muslims. It is the oldest and largest in the Gaza Strip and was identified as the "only structure of historical importance" in the city by some 19th-century Western travelers.

Other mosques in the Old City include the Mamluk-era Sayed Hashem Mosque that believed to house the tomb of Hashem ibn Abd al-Manaf in its dome. There is also the nearby Welayat Mosque that dates back to 1334. In Shuja'iyya, the Ibn Uthman Mosque was built by Nablus native Ahmad ibn Uthman in 1402 and the Ibn Marwan Mosque, housing the tomb of a holy man, was built in 1324.

The Unknown Soldier's Square, located in Rimal, is a monument dedicated to an unknown Palestinian fighter who died in the 1948 War. In 1967, the monument was torn down by Israeli forces and remained a patch of sand, until a public garden was built there with funding from Norway. Qasr al-Basha, originally a Mamluk-era villa that was used by Napoleon during his brief sojourn in Gaza, is located in the Old City and is today a girl's school. The Commonwealth Gaza War Cemetery, often referred to as the British War Cemetery, that contains the graves of fallen Allied soldiers in World War I is 1.5 kilometres northeast of the city center in the Tuffah district near Salah al-Din Road.