Brief History

It is located in Fatih town of Istanbul, on the Historical Peninsula, on At Meydani Street, opposite the Hagia Sophia Mosque. The mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 during Sultan Ahmed I, by Sedefkar Mehmet Ağa, one of Mimar Sinan's students.

Since the walls of the mosque are decorated with approximately 21 thousand blue coloured Iznik tiles, it is also known as the Blue Mosque. There is a large outer courtyard in front of and on both sides of the mosque. The courtyard is surrounded by walls with windows. This courtyard is entered through eight gates, three of which are on the front. The Blue Mosque consists of two plans. One of the plans is a courtyard and the other is a harim, a place of worship. The mosque was built in a rectangular shape with its courtyard. The place of worship is square, measuring 64 meters by 72 meters. Its total area is 2,646 m2. The diameter of the dome, which has a height of 43 meters, is 23 meters. The dome, which draws attention with its size, is located on four large columns.

Since Sultan Ahmet, who built the mosque, was the 16th Ottoman Sultan, there are 16 balconies on the minarets of the mosque. Together with the Blue Mosque complex, it is one of the largest building complexes in Istanbul.

The mosque was built by raising the ground so that it can be seen from many points. The courtyard at the front of the mosque is placed on 26 columns and is surrounded by 30 domes. There is a fountain with six marble columns in the middle of this large area with marble flooring. We can begin our tactile review from this point. When you touch the outer and inner walls of the courtyard, you can feel the projections of these 26 columns. If you continue to explore upwards, you can reach 30 domes that surround the courtyard, evenly spaced above the courtyard wall. This courtyard can be entered through three different doors with stairs. Another feature of these doors is the presence of precious bronze door handles on them.

When you follow the walls to the right with one hand and to the left with the other, centred on the entrance door, you will reach the minarets with 3 balconies on both corners of the courtyard. When you examine the minarets by touching them from the bottom up, you can touch the balconies of these round-shaped structures and the pointed ends such as pencil tips. There are 4 more minarets with the same shape at the corners of the mosque.

When you follow the courtyard walls by touching, you will first reach the lower bodies of the minarets at the corners of the mosque and then the walls of the mosque. Rectangular recesses on the walls with a dome on the upper side form part of the windows with more than 200 large and small coloured glass that illuminate the interior of the mosque.

After examining the windows of the mosque, you can continue your tactile inspection towards its roof. In the middle part of the roof, there is a dome with a diameter of 23 meters. This dome is 180 cm long, the size of a circle that approximately 880 people will form by holding hands.

You can also examine the model of the interior structure of this magnificent dome. You can touch the bowl-like structure of the dome from the inside, the texture representing the tiles, and the recesses of the domed rectangular windows surrounding the dome.

Continuing to tap down from the top of the dome with your fingers, you will reach the recesses around the dome. These recesses represent the small windows surrounding the dome. Located in the center of the mosque, this large dome is placed on a square ground. On the four sides of this square floor are symmetrical half-domes and below these half-domes smaller half-domes. When you continue to examine these domes to the right and left, you can touch the small domes in the corners of the mosque. All the domes of the mosque are surrounded by small windows.