On the trip
Blue Mosque
Wednesday 28 October with Metin. No ticket price on our trip page.
On our trip
- On Metin’s morning, with Hagia Sophia across the square, the cistern, Topkapı, and the Grand Bazaar.
- Our trip page does not list a separate ticket price for the Blue Mosque. Confirm the door rules that morning.
- It is a working mosque. Friday prayer crowding is a different day; the Hagia Sophia warning for Friday 12:00–14:30 is on the Friday page.
- Metin: lobby 07:30, +90 533 230 1976. His fee is $400 cash for the four of us, separate from any monument ticket.
The Blue Mosque is Sultan Ahmed’s mosque, built in the early seventeenth century on the hippodrome side of the square, facing Hagia Sophia. Six minarets. A courtyard that is a proper courtyard, not a sidewalk. Inside, the color that gave it the nickname: Iznik tiles, a lot of blue, covering a classical Ottoman space of cascading domes. Sinan’s great mosques are the structural parents. This one was built by Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, a student of that tradition, for a young sultan who wanted a monument opposite Justinian’s church. The rivalry is the square. You feel it just by standing between the two buildings.
We have no ticket price written down for it. Do not invent one on the morning, and do not assume the Hagia Sophia €25 covers the mosque across the square. Ask at the door, or ask Metin before we are in the queue. Visitor entry is between prayers. Shoes come off. Shoulders and knees are covered. The rules are posted; they are not optional because we have a guide.
What to actually look at, once you are allowed to look: the courtyard first, then the dome from just inside, then the tile at eye level rather than only the ceiling. The tile is the craft. The space is quieter than the exterior suggests, and it is still a mosque with a congregation, not a cleared museum. People are praying. We are the visitors.
It is the first or second stop of a long day, not the day itself. Hagia Sophia, the cistern (card or İstanbulkart only — cash will not help you there), and Topkapı including the Harem are the ticketed buildings. The Grand Bazaar is the optional extension, better today than on Republic Day. If the mosque is briefly closed for prayer when we arrive, we switch order. That is what the guide is for.