The Blue Mosque, also known as the ‘Sultanahmet Mosque’ dominates the skyline of the local area. The building features six slender towers, which are positioned on cascading domes.
Sultan Ahmet wanted to build a place for Islamic worship that was better than Hagia Sophia and this is when this mosque was built. (Built during the seventeenth century)
This mosque is extremely popular with tourists and a lot of them enjoy the frequent flights to Turkey.

At only nineteen years old, Sultan Ahmet commissioned the Blue Mosque to be built and it was completed close to the Hagia Sophia. This building was built on the former site that was occupied by Byzantine imperial palace and also an ancient hippodrome. The mosaics of both of these old buildings can be seen within the Mosaic Museum, which is close to the site. The construction work on this site started during 1609 and it took about seven years to complete.

The most noticeable things about the Blue Mosque are the six slender towers and these can be seen from far away. This building is very unique as mosques normally have one, two or four slender towers but this one has six. It is believed that Sultan had asked the architect to make golden slender towers but this was misinterpreted and thought to have been six. At the time the six slender towers on the mosque was actually quite a scandal. In the end Sultan instructed his architect to build a seventh tower.

Another thing that is very striking about this mosque is the exterior and the cascade of domes, which are arranged beautifully. There are arcades that run beneath each of the domes. Despite the name of this mosque it is not actually blue in color, the blue in the name of the mosque it taken from the tiles that have been used within the inside of the mosque.

Blue Mosque