We spent the last week in May 2015 in Istanbul. After my visit, the one thing stayed in my mind was the Mosques. If you know there are over 14000 different Mosques in Istanbul, you will understand why they will attract your attention and stay in your mind after you leave the city. It is over 14000 unique ones, they are all different and none of them look like the others. Some of them are high, some of them is large, and other is small. Each one of them has their own uniqueness and history, do not forget that all of them are attractive structure. 

We stayed in Sultan Ahmet area very close to most of the historic places in Istanbul cross street from the Basilica and 2 Major building, Sultan Ahmet (more famous with “The Blue Mosque”) and Aya Sophia Museum. Both are very different, extremely large and wonderful structure (as you seen in my photos).

The Blue Mosque as you see from the name built by no other than Sultan Ahmet himself and completed in 1016.

Every Mosque must have at least one minaret (The sultan allowed four minarets princes and princesses allowed two minarets; others allowed only one) and one dome but most of them have more the one minaret so imagine the number of minarets in Istanbul skyline which included over 14000 mosques.

The Blue Mosque alone has 6 large minarets, one main dome and 8 secondary domes. 

Aya Sophia museum, another great structure famous with extremely large dome located a cross from Sultan Ahmet Mosque.

Aya Sophia originally built as a Greece Christian patriarchal church at year 547 then becomes imperial mosque at 1453 by order of Sultan Mohamed II after adding four minarets and altered the original artwork from Christian to Islamic, then change to a museum at 1935 to become one of the most visited museums in Turkey.

One of the other large mosques that we visited was the suleymaniye mosque.

Istanbul called the city with the seven hills. Looking at Istanbul skyline you have to understand the city is famous with their seven hills and you need to visit each one of them in order to see most of the old part in Istanbul.

On the third hill after walked through a very narrow and steep streets full with all kind of stores that sells every thing you can imagine we arrived to our destination, which was the Suleymaniya mosque. It was large (The Suleymaniya mosque is largest of Istanbul 14000 mosque).

As the name said, it is built by Sultan Suleyman and completed on 1558, there are one large dome and too many small ones next it famous 4 minarets.