Blog

The Blue Mosque is the other name that is given to the Sultanahmet Mosque and its building features six slender towers, which are positioned on cascading domes. This building dominates the skyline of the local area. During the seventeenth century Sultan Ahmet had a desire to build a place for Islamic worship that was better than Hagia Sophia and this is when this mosque was built. This mosque is very popular with tourists and a lot of them enjoy the frequent flights to Turkey.

Sultan Ahmet commissioned the Blue Mosque when he was only actually nineteen years of age and it was built 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.