The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Mosques in Turkey
5 places · updated 5 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful UNESCO-listed mosques in Turkey are Hagia Sophia, Sultan Ahmed Mosque and Selimiye Mosque. The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed mosques. Last updated 5 October 2026.
Turkey's UNESCO mosques trace the arc of Islamic architecture in Anatolia, from carved Seljuk-era stone to the great domed Ottoman complexes. The Ottomans took the dome of Hagia Sophia as both challenge and model, and their architects, Sinan above all, spent a century refining it.
Hagia Sophia, built as a church in 537, served as a mosque for centuries, and its minarets were added after 1453. The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, completed in 1616, is known as the Blue Mosque for its Iznik tiles and has six minarets. The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, finished in 1575, is the work Sinan himself called his masterpiece, with a dome that matches Hagia Sophia's span. The Süleymaniye Mosque crowns one of Istanbul's hills and holds the tombs of Süleyman the Magnificent and Hürrem Sultan. The Great Mosque and Hospital of Divriği, from the 13th century, has stone portals carved with plant patterns so deep they look like lace.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hagia Sophia | Mosque | ✓ |
| 2 | Sultan Ahmed Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 3 | Selimiye Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 4 | Süleymaniye Mosque | Mosque | ✓ |
| 5 | Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital | Mosque | ✓ |
01 Hagia Sophia
Ayasofya
Turkey · 1.1 km from Istanbul41.008° N 28.980° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by edibejko from Pixabay The building that stands today was put up in barely five years. In January 532 the Nika riots burned down the previous church on the site, and within weeks Emperor Justinian I had started a far more ambitious replacement, designed by two scholars rather than master masons: Anthemius of Tralles, a mathematician, and Isidore of Miletus, a geometer. It was dedicated in 537.
Did you know? Envoys of the Kievan Rus' prince reported that inside they could not tell whether they were in heaven or on earth, a verdict tied to Rus' conversion to Orthodoxy.
02 Sultan Ahmed Mosque
Turkey · 1.4 km from Istanbul41.005° N 28.977° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by OWPictures from Pixabay Sultan Ahmed I commissioned this at just 19 years old, and it was built between 1609 and 1616 — a low point in Ottoman fortunes, coming right after an unfavorable peace ended a long war with Persia. An imperial mosque of this scale was, among other things, a calculated show of confidence: proof the empire hadn't actually faltered. Ahmed died the year after it was finished, at 27.
Did you know? The tile orders swallowed the entire İznik industry, and in 1613 the sultan banned making or selling tiles for anyone else until his were finished.
03 Selimiye Mosque
Turkey · 1.2 km from Edirne41.678° N 26.559° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Mozder from Pixabay The Selimiye Mosque in Edirne is the building its architect considered his masterpiece. Mimar Sinan, the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire, built it for Sultan Selim II between 1568 and 1575, and it is widely regarded as the summit of Ottoman — and much of Islamic — architecture.
Did you know? Sinan was about 80 when he built the Selimiye, which he called his masterwork after the Şehzade, his apprentice work, and the Süleymaniye, his journeyman work.
04 Süleymaniye Mosque
Turkey · 0.9 km from Istanbul41.016° N 28.964° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by fotos1992 from Pixabay The Süleymaniye crowns Istanbul's Third Hill, and from the water its silhouette — a great central dome shouldered by cascading half-domes and four slender minarets — is one of the defining outlines of the old city's skyline. It was built for Suleiman the Magnificent by his chief architect Mimar Sinan; the inscription over the entrance gives 1550 for the foundation and 1557 for the inauguration.
Did you know? Sinan is said to have channelled the smoke of the mosque's oil lamps into a chamber above the entrance, where the soot was gathered and turned into calligraphers' ink.
05 Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital
Turkey39.371° N 38.122° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
R Prazeres · CC BY-SA 4.0 Divriği is a small town in the uplands of Sivas Province, and above its roofs, just below the citadel, stands one of the most astonishing pieces of stone carving in the Islamic world. The mosque and the hospital attached to it were raised together in 1228–1229 under the Mengujekids, a minor Anatolian dynasty whose Divriği branch ruled this valley.
Did you know? Each aisle of the prayer hall is roofed with a different star-patterned stone vault, so the ceilings never repeat from one bay to the next.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful UNESCO-listed mosques in Turkey?
- On our list, Hagia Sophia ranks first, followed by Sultan Ahmed Mosque and Selimiye Mosque.
- Why is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque called the Blue Mosque?
- Its interior is lined with tens of thousands of hand-painted Iznik tiles, many in shades of blue, and the light through its windows makes the walls look blue.
- Who was Mimar Sinan?
- Sinan was the chief architect of the Ottoman Empire for about fifty years in the 16th century, serving Süleyman the Magnificent and his successors. He designed hundreds of buildings, including the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques.
- How many UNESCO-listed mosques are on this list in Turkey?
- The list covers 5 UNESCO-listed mosques.