The Kılıç Ali Pasha Mosque originally stood right beside the Bosphorus, but since the water in front of it has since been filled in, it is now surrounded by other buildings (in particular it now faces the Galataport cruise terminal).

The central dome of the mosque is 12.70 metres (41.7 ft) in diameter, carried on pendentives on granite piers and two half-domes on the Qibla axis.

One of the two inscriptions, at the outer entrance of the complex, features a four-verse poem in jali thuluth calligraphic script in Ottoman Turkish by the poet Ulvî and written by calligrapher Demircikulu Yusuf: Mîr-i bahr â’nî Kılıç Paşa Kapudan-ı zemân Yaptı çün bu camii ola yeri Darüsselâm Hâtif-i kudsî görüp Ulvî dedi tarihini

Ehl-i imâna ibâdetgâh olsun bu makamThe letters in the final line - 'May this be a house of worship for people of the faith' - add up to the number 988.

[3] After an examination of the complex's foundation documents, the Turkish researcher Rasih Nuri İleri claimed that the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes had been a slave during its construction, like the captive character in his novel Don Quixote.

Undeterred, Kılıç Ali Pasha had rocks brought from all over the region and built the mosque on an artificial island connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway.