Istanbul - without exaggeration a huge city, but there are almost no high-rise buildings .This city, in the history of which there were many dramatic moments, as if spreading on the slopes of the hills on which is located, carefully preserving the landscape features .A trip around the city is accompanied by endless ups and downs, and in the spaces between the houses the water surface glistens continually: in different parts of the city one can admire the opening view of the Marble or Black Sea, the winding Bosphorus Strait or the picturesque Golden Horn Bay .And the city itself must certainly be admired from the water! From the side of the pleasure boat it is clear that on the tops of all seven Istanbul hills majestically rise mosques, whose graceful silhouettes with ascending minarets effectively appear against the background of a clear Turkish sky .

In general, mosques are the main decoration of Istanbul, the bulwark of Islam, the meeting place of the believer with God. And even their convinced atheists bow before their solemn beauty. The call to prayer - azan - is distributed five times a day from each mosque. The sonorous voices of the muezzins merge into an unsettled chorus and fill the city's air, as if making it denser. Without this penetrating "symphony" it is impossible to imagine Turkey, as one can not comprehend Russia without hearing the church bells ringing for the holiday.

All hiking trails in Istanbul traditionally converge at one point - on Sultanahmet square .Here the ratio of historical attractions per square meter of land is just off scale .For many centuries, there has been a relentless debate, who is better and more beautiful, the mosques of Hagia Sophia and Sultanahmet, also called the Blue Mosque .The latter, which gave the name to the whole area, is the largest in Istanbul .Its difference from others is an atypical number of minarets, there are six of them here .Sultan Ahmet I wished to leave behind a majestic mosque that surpasses the beauty of many buildings of that time, and it should be noted that the plan was fully implemented .

Opposite the Blue Mosque, the entrance to which, like all mosques in the city, is free, the Hagia Sophia (Hagia Sophia) is located, which will cost 20 Turkish lira (March 2010) .For almost a thousand years the Cathedral of St. Sophia was the main Orthodox church, and after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 was converted into a mosque .The Christian mosaics were plastered with plaster, the mihrab was erected in the place of the altar, stone minarets were erected at the corners .In 1934, Hagia Sophia became a museum and now tells visitors of any faith about its centuries-old history ...