While the churches of Constantinople are impressive in the extreme, so too are the mosques of Istanbul. There is, of course, the Blue Mosque, seen here from the door of Hagia Sophia; it was built next to it and intended to overshadow it:
The mosque is obviously not blue on the outside, and in fact is only vaguely blue even inside:
Because its architects, unlike those of Hagia Sophia, needed ponderous pillars to hold up the central dome, it's considered a lesser architectural work, and as you're about to see, there are more beautiful mosques in the city. But it remains one of Istanbul's most famous landmarks, and at the same time, very much a working mosque, keeping its carpets scrupulously clean for the worshipers:
We visited two other mosques in the city: the New Mosque, spectacularly sited on the Golden Horn waterfront, and so named because it is "only" about 400 years old:
While the New Mosque's interior was the most spectacular of any we saw, connoisseurs insist that its tilework, done during the early stages of the Ottoman Empire's decline, is nowhere near as fine as that of the nearly, smaller Rustem Pasha mosque:
Quite honestly, though, those subtleties escaped us.
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