Blue Mosque
Six minarets and twenty thousand Iznik tiles, still in use as a place of worship.
Duration
30 min – 1 hr
Best time
Early morning, outside prayer times
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Sultan Ahmed I's mosque was finished in 1617, facing Hagia Sophia, with the explicit intention of outdoing it. Its six minarets caused a scandal: only the mosque at Mecca had as many, and the sultan had to fund a seventh at Mecca to settle the row.
The nickname comes from inside: more than twenty thousand Iznik tiles, mostly blue, cover the walls and galleries. It is a working place of worship, entry is free, and it closes five times a day for prayer.
Getting there
Sultanahmet district, tram T1, Sultanahmet stop. Hagia Sophia is two hundred metres away, across the park.
What to bring
- Covering clothes
Rules on site
Shoes off, shoulders and knees covered, hair covered for women: scarves are lent at the door. The mosque closes to visitors half an hour before each prayer and at Friday midday.
Checked on 28 August 2026 at The Istanbul Insider — entrance fees 2026
Other places in Istanbul
Hagia SophiaByzantine basilica, then mosque, then museum, then mosque again: fifteen hundred years of history under one dome.
Topkapi PalaceFour centuries of Ottoman sultans, their treasury and their harem, on the headland above the Bosphorus.
- Basilica CisternThree hundred and thirty-six columns sunk beneath the city, and two Medusa heads set upside down.