Where is the Blue Mosque?

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque stands in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district, directly across a square from the Hagia Sophia and beside the site of the ancient Hippodrome. It was built between 1609 and 1616 for Sultan Ahmed I by the architect Sedefkâr Mehmed Ağa, a student of the great architect Sinan. It earned the nickname “Blue Mosque” from the tens of thousands of hand-painted blue İznik tiles inside. Unusually, it has six minarets, which was controversial at the time because it matched the mosque in Mecca. It remains a working mosque, closed to tourists during prayer times.