The Blue Mosque, also known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, which was constructed between 1609 and 1617.
Approaching the mosque, which was built by the Ottomans on the site of former palaces and there was controversy over the funding to build it. Some clerics said it should have only been paid for with money taken from conquests, but Ahmed I hadn’t won anything so had to use money from the state treasury.
The mosque’s courtyard and this is where the main entrance is and there were a large number of visitors, seemingly mainly tourists. It’s free to enter and visitors are made welcome, with the usual protocol of having to take your shoes off.
Inside and it’s a spacious and light space, with a grand domed arrangements. Pope Benedict XVI visited here in November 2006, only the second time that a Pope had visited a mosque.
The interior has been designed to amplify the voice of the imam so that 10,000 people could hear without the need for amplification.
A common local account attributes the construction of six minarets to a linguistic misunderstanding between the Sultan and his architect. According to this story, the Sultan requested ‘altın’ minarets, meaning gold, but the architect mistakenly heard ‘altı’ which is the Turkish word for six. Although historians generally view this tale as a myth, the mosque is historically significant as one of only three in Turkey to feature this specific number of minarets.
My previous photos might suggest that this is a quiet place for spiritual reflection, but this is more the scene.
The majority of the interior is either painted or tiled and there are over 21,000 tiles here.
The main dome is 43 metres in height and that’s supported by four pillars and it’s fair to say that they’re quite chunky in size, nicknamed ‘elephant feet’.
And a photo of the mosque at night, it’s a beautiful site given the way they’ve managed the lighting of it.