Winter in Istanbul: Famous mosques from afar

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Sunday 19 July, 2015 by Uncle Spike

More grey skies from our winter trip to Istanbul…

I’ve always had a fascination for mosques, dating back long before they meant anything to me in a spiritual sense. Architecturally stunning, imposing and with a certain immense beauty, I never tire of a) seeing them, b) visiting them, and of course c) photographing them 🙂

To start off we have two very grand examples. On the left is the New Valide Sultan Mosque (c.1665), and of the right is the magnificent Süleymaniye Mosque (c.1558).

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The most famous probably for overseas visitors is the Sultan Ahmet mosque (c.1616), often referred to as The Blue Mosque due to it’s incredible blue tiles inside. It has a distinctive difference too, in that it has six minarets, although looks like one was undergoing some remedial works when I took this.

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Here we can see the Sultan Ahmet (left), and then Hagia Sophia (right).

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Bit different…. view from the bathroom window of a ferry 🙂

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The Hagia Sophia in greater detail, but still from afar…

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Here we can see the Hagia Sophia (left) and the Sultan Ahmet (right), as taken from the top of the Galata Tower, which will be a feature of another post, on the other side of the Golden Horn.

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And in this shot, taken from a ferry crossing the Bosphorus, we can see the Sultan Ahmet (left), then Hagia Sophia and the large structure dominating the scene is the Topkapı Palace.

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One final one, the Ataşehir Mimar Sinan mosque, as taken from the freeway as we drove past, slowly of course, as the traffic grinds to a virtual halt once the city limits are reached.

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