After that gradually began a deliberate reshaping of the urban plan of Arta aiming the removal of all those elements that reminded and bespoke of the town's recent Ottoman past.

It is theorized that the Sultan Mehmed Mosque was one of the first Ottoman monuments to be targeted and eventually destroyed due to its symbolic location inside the castle, while the vast majority of the rest of the reminders of the Ottoman period where left neglected to rot and collapse after the Muslim inhabitants of Arta fled.

In 1839, Panagiotis Zographos drew, under the guidance of Yannis Makriyannis, the siege of Arta in late 1821, during the Greek War of Independence.

The location was not picked in chance, as the founding of Ottoman buildings in the most prominent positions was used as a sign of power against the Christian population of Arta.

Inside the castle, near the mosque, once were houses, a barracks and prisons, while at the gate an imaret functioned which offered food to the poor for free.