Grand Çamlıca Mosque vs Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque)
Two temples in Istanbul. Grand Çamlıca Mosque has 3 tickets and tours to book; Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque) has 34 tickets and tours to book. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
The Grand Çamlıca Mosque is a working place of worship and costs nothing to enter. There is no ticket and no online booking for the mosque alone: visitors simply arrive outside prayer times, leave their shoes at the racks or carry them in a bag, and walk in. The museum and galleries in the complex have their own opening hours, and the museum may charge a separate fee.
Because the mosque stands on a hilltop in Üsküdar, on the Asian side of Istanbul, many visitors fold it into a half-day or full-day tour of that side of the city.
Entry to the Sultan Ahmed Mosque is free and there is no ticket to buy, so anything sold online is really a guide, a combination with paid sights next door, or both. Visitors simply queue at the tourist entrance on the Hippodrome side, which moves fairly quickly outside the busiest hours, and the mosque closes to sightseers during each of the five daily prayers.
The most common product is a guided walk of the Sultanahmet quarter, usually two to four hours, that takes in the mosque, the Hippodrome with its obelisks and the exterior or interior of Hagia Sophia. Longer versions add Topkapi Palace and its Harem, the Basilica Cistern or the Grand Bazaar, and full-day tours often finish with a Bosphorus cruise;
