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Visitors are welcome at the Mosque, but are asked to take off their shoes and dress conseratively. Women who do not have headscarves or something to cover their shoulders are given a scarf. Mama brought a scarf Daddy and Sofia picked out for her at the Arasta Bazaar near the hotel. This is the ceiling of the place where you take off your shoes. You get a bag to carry them in since you leave from the other side of the mosque.
This mosque was built to rival Hagia Sophia which it does much better on the exterior than it does on the interior.
The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Turkish: Sultan Ahmet Camii) is a historic mosque in Istanbul. The mosque is popularly known as the Blue Mosque for the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior..
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It was built from 1609 to 1616, during the rule of Ahmed I. Its KĂĽlliye contains a tomb of the founder, a madrasah and a hospice. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is still popularly used as a mosque..
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After the Peace of Zsitvatorok and the unfavorable result of the war with Persia, Sultan Ahmet the First decided to build a big mosque in Istanbul to calm God.[citation needed] It would be the first imperial mosque for more than forty years. While his predecessors had paid for their mosques with their spoil of war, Ahmet the First had to remove the funds of the Treasury, because he had not gained remarkable victories. It caused the anger of oulémas, the Muslim jurists. The mosque must be built on the site of the palace of the Byzantine emperors, in front of the basilica Ayasofya (at that time, the mosque the most worshipped in Istanbul) and the racecourse, a site of a big symbolic meaning. Big parts of the south shore of the mosque rest on the foundations, the vaults of the old Grand Palace.
Istanbul was full of cats. We saw many of them hanging out on these benches in from the mosque. Cute!!
We woke up earlyish on Tuesday. Our first stop was the Grand Bazaar, where we only got lost at the end. I bought a couple little things that were overpriced, including some Turkish Delight. We then came back to look inside the Blue Mosque, which was lovely and just utterly covered in mosaics. We wanted to visit the Hagia Sophia, but the tour-bus masses lined a full city block. So instead we wandered a bit and found lunch.
In the evening we returned to the airport and flew to Athens.