Facing Hagia Sophia across a garden square in the heart of Istanbul, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque is the city's best-loved imperial mosque. The world knows it as the Blue Mosque, for the thousands of blue tiles that shimmer across its interior. Built in the early seventeenth century, it is the grand finale of the classical Ottoman age.
A sultan's statement
The mosque was commissioned by the young sultan Ahmed I and completed around 1616, after roughly seven years of work. Ahmed wanted a monument to rival the nearby Hagia Sophia and to reaffirm Ottoman power. He chose a prime site overlooking the old hippodrome and the sea, and the result is one of the most photographed skylines in the world: a mounting cascade of domes and half-domes that seems to rise like a wave toward the single great dome at its centre.
The blue interior
The mosque takes its nickname from its decoration. The upper walls and galleries are clad in more than twenty thousand handmade ceramic tiles from Iznik, the famous Ottoman pottery town, painted in blues, greens and whites with tulips, roses, lilies and cypresses. Some two hundred and sixty windows, once filled with coloured glass, wash the space in daylight, and the tiles turn that light a cool blue. The overall impression is of a vast, calm and luminous hall, an approach to sacred light that the Ottomans had perfected a generation earlier in the Suleymaniye Mosque, Istanbul. You can read how this fits the tradition in Mosque architecture styles around the world.
The six minarets
One feature set the Blue Mosque apart from the start: its six minarets, where most imperial mosques had two or four. Tradition holds that this stirred controversy, because the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest in Islam, also had six, and it was thought improper for another mosque to match it. The story goes that a seventh minaret was added at Mecca to preserve its precedence. True or embellished, the tale captures how carefully rank and reverence were weighed in Ottoman building. The two holiest mosques themselves are covered in our worship guide to the Two Holy Mosques.
A living landmark
Like the Suleymaniye, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque was the centre of a larger complex with a religious school, a hospice and the founder's tomb, in keeping with the civic role of the great mosque explained in short history of mosques. It remains an active mosque, filling with worshippers five times a day, while thousands of visitors admire it in between. It sits among the world's landmarks in our pillar on Great mosques of the world, and pairs naturally with the modern Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi for how the tradition of the grand congregational mosque continues today. Unfamiliar words are glossed in the Glossary.
Visiting
The Blue Mosque is free to enter and welcomes respectful visitors of every background outside prayer times, with dress coverings available at the entrance. It anchors a walking route through historic Istanbul rich in mosques of every era: explore them in our directory for Turkey, or find places to pray anywhere via the the interactive map and the full list of find mosques.