Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and Suleymaniye Mosque Walking Tour

Hagia Sophia: 1,500 years on Sultanahmet Square

Hagia Sophia was completed in the year 537 as the cathedral of the Byzantine capital, and for almost nine centuries its dome, more than 30 metres across and around 55 metres high, was the largest enclosed space in the world. After the conquest of the city in 1453 it became an imperial mosque, served as a museum from 1934, and has been a working mosque again since 2020. Today foreign visitors enter with a ticket through a separate entrance and follow a route through the upper gallery, which holds the finest surviving mosaics; the ground floor is reserved for worshippers.

On this Hagia Sophia tour your guide explains the building's layers, from the Byzantine marble and mosaics to the calligraphic roundels and the mihrab, and the fast-track ticket means you walk past the ticket queue (the security check cannot be skipped). You spend about an hour here. Shoulders and knees must be covered and women cover their hair; the gallery is reached by a long stone ramp.

The Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque)

Facing Hagia Sophia across the gardens of Sultanahmet Square stands the Blue Mosque, built between 1609 and 1616 for Sultan Ahmed I and famous as the only imperial mosque in Istanbul with six minarets. Its name comes from the more than twenty thousand blue and white Iznik tiles that cover the lower walls and galleries of the prayer hall, painted with tulips, carnations and cypress trees, lit by about 260 windows beneath the cascade of domes. Your guide takes you through the arcaded courtyard with its ablution fountain and then into the visitors' section of the prayer hall for about an hour.

Entry to the Blue Mosque is free, which is why it is included in every option of this tour, but the mosque closes to visitors around each of the five daily prayers and for longer at Friday noon, so the guide may switch the order of the stops. Headscarves and wrap skirts are lent at the entrance, and shoes are carried in a bag.

Tea break in a historic madrasah courtyard

Between the Blue Mosque and the climb to the Third Hill the tour stops for about thirty minutes in the courtyard of a historic madrasah in the Sultanahmet district, one of the small Ottoman theological colleges built around a courtyard with student cells on each side. Several of these have been restored as quiet cafés and craft workshops, and they are among the calmest corners of the old city, a few steps from the crowds of the square. You can order a tulip glass of Turkish tea, a Turkish coffee or a cold sherbet and a local snack at your own expense while the guide answers questions about Ottoman education, calligraphy and the life of the mosque complexes.

The break also gives you a chance to use the restrooms and buy water before the walk to Suleymaniye, which is the longest stretch of the route; on hot summer days our Istanbul team recommends a hat and sunscreen for this part.

Suleymaniye Mosque on the Third Hill

The Suleymaniye Mosque crowns the Third Hill of the old city above the Golden Horn and is widely considered the masterpiece of the imperial architect Mimar Sinan, who built it between 1550 and 1557 for Sultan Suleiman, after whom it is named. The dome rises about 53 metres above the floor on four great piers, and the interior is lighter and more restrained than the Blue Mosque. The mosque sits at the centre of a complex that once held madrasahs, a hospital, a soup kitchen and a hammam; the tombs of the sultan and his wife stand in the garden behind the qibla wall.

For more than 450 years Suleymaniye was the largest mosque in Istanbul, until a new mosque on the Asian side opened in 2019. You spend about an hour here; entry is free and the mosque closes briefly to visitors at prayer times. The terrace outside the courtyard gives one of the best views in Istanbul, across the Golden Horn to the Galata Tower.

The walk across the old city

This is a walking tour, so the way between the stops is part of the experience. From Sultanahmet Square the route to Suleymaniye usually follows Divanyolu, the old ceremonial avenue of the Byzantine and Ottoman capital, past the burnt Column of Constantine at Çemberlitaş and the gate of Istanbul University on Beyazıt Square, with the outer walls of the Grand Bazaar on one side; the climb to the mosque passes through the lanes of the Suleymaniye quarter with its restored wooden houses and the small workshops of the Vefa district. The whole tour covers roughly three to four kilometres on cobbles, flagstones and slopes, which is why the operator does not recommend it for people with mobility, heart or respiratory problems.

Comfortable shoes matter more than anything else. The tour ends back at the German Fountain, two minutes from the Sultanahmet tram stop, so you can continue to Topkapı Palace, the Basilica Cistern or the Grand Bazaar (closed on Sundays) in the afternoon.