Sultanahmet Mosque (Blue Mosque) Tickets and Tours | GetExperiеnce.com

The Blue Mosque was raised between 1609 and 1616 for Ahmed I, who was in his twenties and in a hurry. Sedefkar Mehmed Agha built it, one of Sinan's pupils. It is a working mosque and entry costs nothing.

Where the blue actually is

The name comes from tiles, and they sit well above eye level. More than twenty thousand Iznik pieces line the upper walls and the gallery. From below they read as haze, not pattern.

The lower half is stone, carpet and paint. Look up instead. Some 260 windows ring a stack of half-domes that funnels into the main one.

The argument about six minarets

Six was the sore point. The Great Mosque in Mecca carried the same number, and contemporaries read the match as presumption. The tale of an architect mishearing gold as six is told everywhere and rests on nothing.

Practical

• Entry. Free, through a separate visitors' door. Worshippers use their own gate.
• Prayer. Visits stop about half an hour before each call and resume afterwards. Friday midday is the long closure.
• Dress. Shoulders and knees covered, hair covered for women, shoes off and carried in the bag handed to you.
• Restoration. Scaffolding filled the interior for six years and came down in 2023. Older photographs show a different room.
• Timing. Early morning before the coaches, or the last hour of daylight. Summer midday is heat and crush together.
• From outside. The six minarets frame properly from the park, not from the gate. Guided old city days start here for that reason.