Visit to Istanbul
September 8,
2024. (Sunday) 9:30~17:00
(The following places are for reference, and the final schedule
should be adjusted to the actual notice. Lunch is at your own
expense)
Hagia Sophia
Hagia
Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (Turkish: Ayasofya
Camii), is a mosque and major cultural and historical site in
Istanbul, Turkey. The building was erected three times by the
Eastern Roman Empire. The present Hagia Sophia is the third, built
in 537 AD. It was an Orthodox church until the Ottoman conquest of
Istanbul in 1453, then a mosque until 1935, then a museum and then
from 2020 a mosque again, as well as being a Roman Catholic
cathedral for some decades after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.
Blue Mosque
The
Blue Mosque in Istanbul, also known by its official name, the Sultan
Ahmed Mosque, is an Ottoman-era historical imperial mosque located
in Istanbul, Turkey. A functioning mosque, it also attracts large
numbers of tourist visitors. It was constructed between 1609 and
1616 during the rule of Ahmed I. Its Külliye contains Ahmed's tomb,
a madrasah and a hospice. Hand-painted blue tiles adorn the mosque’s
interior walls, and at night the mosque is bathed in blue as lights
frame the mosque’s five main domes, six minarets and eight secondary
domes. It sits next to the Hagia Sophia, the principal mosque of
Istanbul until the Blue Mosque's construction and another popular
tourist site. The Blue Mosque was included in the UNESCO World
Heritage Site list in 1985 under the name of "Historic Areas of
Istanbul".
Grand Bazaar
The
Grand Bazaar in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered
markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops
on a total area of 30,700 m2, attracting between 250,000 and 400,000
visitors daily. In 2014, it was listed No.1 among the world's
most-visited tourist attractions with 91,250,000 annual visitors.
The Grand Bazaar at Istanbul is often regarded as one of the first
shopping malls of the world.