It is located in the historical center of the city, close to the Selimiye Mosque and Old Mosque. The name refers to unusual minaret with three balconies.

The architect of the mosque is not known. It is built of Burgaz limestone with a main dome that is 24 m in diameter. When first built the dome was the largest in any Ottoman building. The mosque was severely damaged by fire in 1732 and by an earthquake in 1748 but was repaired on the order of Mahmut I.

The two blue and turquoise underglaze-painted tile panels in the tympana of the windows were probably produced by the same group of tilemakers who had decorated the Yeşil Mosque (1419–21) in Bursa where the tiles are signed as “the work of the masters of Tabriz” (ʿamal-i ustadan-i Tabriz). The running pattern of the Chinese influenced floral border tiles is similar to those in the small Muradiye Mosque in Edirne.

The Üç Şerefeli Mosque is one of the most important mosques of this period of early Ottoman architecture. It has a very different design from preceding mosques. The floor plan is nearly square but is divided between a rectangular courtyard and a rectangular prayer hall.

The courtyard has a central fountain and is surrounded by a portico of arches and domes, with a decorated central portal leading into the courtyard from the outside and another one leading from the courtyard into the prayer hall.

The prayer hall is centered around a huge dome which covers most of the middle part of the hall, while the sides of the hall are covered by pairs of smaller domes.

The central dome, 24 meters in diameter, is much larger than any other Ottoman dome built before this. On the outside, this results in an early example of the “cascade of domes” visual effect seen in later Ottoman mosques, although the overall arrangement here is described by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom as not yet successful compared to later examples.

The mosque has a total of four minarets, arranged around the four corners of the courtyard. Its southwestern minaret was the tallest Ottoman minaret built up to that time and features three balconies, from which the mosque’s name derives. The mosque was heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1752 and partly reconstructed.