We started with a visit of the egypt obelisk which is about 3500 years old!

The base of the obelisk

Next, we went to the Blue Mosque, unfortunately, it was closed at the time. 

Blue Mosque

Afterwards, we visited the Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) which is a really impressive building from the 6th century.  Nowadays, since about 1932, it is used as a museum, no longer as a church.

The entrance hall of Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is really huge.  The discs with the islamic calligraphy on the picture below have a diameter of 12,5 meter!

The scaffolding in the center of the building is there since about 9 years!

The diameter of the cupola is about 55 meter!

Hagia Sophia was originally built as a christian church, so it is build in direction of Jerusalem.  The church was converted into a mosque in 1453 when Turks conquered Istanbul.  A Mihrab was build into the church.  It is a chamber / door indicating the direction of Mecca.  The difference is about 8 degrees, see picture below:

A mosaic on the outside of the Hagia Sophia showing how the building originally looked like (on the left)

Afterwards, we visited the Topkapi palace. 

entering the second courtyard

The topkapi palace has some impressive exhibitions including the kitchens with the display of great Chinese and Japanese Dish porcelains. There are over 600 pieces exhibited out of 10000(!).

European Glass and Silver Collection

The kitchens

In the third courtyard, the treasury shows jewelry from many parts of the world, including the Kasikci (spoonmaker's) diamond. This diamond is 86 carats and surrounded by 49 brilliants.

Lunch at a restaurant directly below the Topkapi Palace

Beautiful view from the restaurant to the Asian side of Istanbul

See more pictures from the Istanbul Xmas Event (a visit to a carpet shop and dinner cruise between europe and asia) on page 3 of my report.

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