I think I spent quite a bit of time just outside the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. It certainly a beautiful structure. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is said to be one of the best examples of Ottoman architecture. It has inspiration from Byzantine architecture and it incorporated various Islamic designs to form a unique style on its own. A lot of mosques in Turkey have this style and I think it is really attractive compared to other mosques I have seen elsewhere.
The main entrance of the mosque is actually just across the main courtyard entrance. As you can see, there are a lot of people here but thankfully they have organized the crowd here and you cannot enter from the central entrance. Instead, there is an entrance to the side where everybody goes in. The central entrance is for people to exit from. Interestingly the main entrance isn’t as large as I thought it would be. I looks like the main entrance looks much like the courtyard entrance where I got in from. This is a curious design. I am not surprised that the management would then choose to usher in all the tourists some other way considering how small it is. I would expect that there won’t be as many people going out as the people going in.
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