The Kyuchyuk Hassan Mosque, in honour of the first Ottoman governor-general of the island is otherwise known as the Yali Cami, meaning the mosque of the shore, and as the Mosque of the Janissaries, a reminder that the one who laid the foundation stone was the leader of the first Turkish regiment of Janissaries on Crete. It is the oldest entirely Ottoman structure in the city. It was built shortly after the conclusion of the Ottoman siege of Canea in the summer of 1645 and was erected conspicuously right on the seafront. According to archaeological excavations, it stood on top of an earlier Venetian church. This was part and parcel of a deliberate policy of "Ottomanisation" which aimed, as in Byzantine Constantinople for example and elsewhere, to convert a Venetian urban space in this case into one that was distinctly Ottoman.