Blue Mosque 1-Hour Guided Tour

The Hippodrome of Constantinople, the meeting point

Your guide waits beside the Egyptian Obelisk on the Hippodrome, the long square between the Blue Mosque and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum. This was the chariot-racing stadium of Byzantine Constantinople, and three monuments from its central spine still stand: the pink granite obelisk brought from Karnak in Egypt in 390, the bronze Serpent Column from Delphi and the stone Walled Obelisk. At the north end is the German Fountain, a gift from the German emperor in 1901.

The guide uses these few minutes to set the scene: how Sultanahmet grew on top of the Byzantine palace quarter, why the mosque was built here, and how to find your way around the Old City afterwards. The Sultanahmet stop of the T1 tram is three minutes away, which makes this one of the easiest Istanbul tours to reach on your own.

The courtyards of the Blue Mosque

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I by the architect Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, a pupil of the great Sinan, on the site of the Byzantine Great Palace. From the Hippodrome you enter through the outer courtyard and then the inner courtyard, a marble square almost as large as the prayer hall, surrounded by an arcade of thirty small domes with the hexagonal ablution fountain in the middle. This is the best place to count the six minarets, unusual for its time, and to see the cascade of domes and half-domes that gives the mosque its silhouette.

The guide explains the dress code and the visiting rules here before you go inside: shoulders and knees covered for everyone, a headscarf for women (provided at the entrance), shoes carried in a bag. The visitors' entrance is on the Hippodrome side, not through the main courtyard gate.

Inside the prayer hall, the blue tiles and the dome

The interior is what gives the mosque its popular name: more than twenty thousand hand-painted Iznik tiles in blue, green and white, with tulips, carnations, cypresses and fruit patterns, cover the lower walls and the galleries, and the upper levels are painted in blue. Some 260 windows let in daylight under the central dome, which rises to about 43 metres on four enormous fluted piers. The guide points out the marble mihrab, the carved minbar, the sultan's loge and the calligraphy on the dome, and explains how the recent restoration brought the colours back.

Visitors stay in the area behind the rope, on the carpet, in socks, while the prayer area in front stays open to worshippers. The tour ends inside, so once your guide has finished you may stay as long as you like, as long as you leave before the next prayer time.

Visiting hours, prayer times and the Old City around the mosque

The Blue Mosque is a working mosque, free to enter, and it closes to visitors for about 90 minutes around each of the five daily prayers; on Fridays it stays closed to visitors until after the midday prayer, around 14:30. That is why this tour starts at 10:00, 11:00 or 14:00, and why the guide may slightly adjust the order of the walk to match the day's prayer times. The security check line can take 30 minutes in winter and up to an hour in summer; the tour does not skip it.

After the tour you are in the centre of Sultanahmet: Hagia Sophia is across the park, the Basilica Cistern two minutes north, Topkapi Palace ten minutes on foot, and the Grand Bazaar fifteen minutes away (closed on Sundays). Your guide will happily sketch the rest of your day.