Just a few steps away is the Blue Mosque (the Sultan Ahmed Mosque) - also under restoration, which means its beauty cannot be fully appreciated. The mosque owes its name to the hand-painted blue tiles adorning its interior walls. It was built between 1609 and 1616 on the orders of Sultan Ahmet I, to rival, or better surpass, the grandeur of Hagia Sophia, which was by then the primary imperial mosque in Istanbul.

Whether that mission was accomplished is debatable. But today the Blue Mosque has certainly earned its fair share of fame, attracting visitors who, with shoes in hand, queued up for long time in order to step onto the lush red velvet carpet inside.

In fact, that fame has grown so much as to overshadow other mosques in Istanbul, some equally beautiful if not more so. One is Suleymaniye, also a major imperial mosque, and one that I had the good fortune to visit on a rainy, mildly cold morning.