Hagia Sophia Tickets: There Are Two Different 25 Euro Tickets

People book “Hagia Sophia, €25” and turn up at the wrong building. There are two separate products at the same price, and neither includes the other.

1. The mosque, upper gallery — €25

Introduced on 15 January 2024 for foreign visitors. It buys the upper gallery only, plus a QR audio guide in 23 languages. The ground-floor prayer hall is reserved for worshippers — you look down into it from above. Entry is through a separate booth near the Ahmed III Fountain and a tunnel under the Beyazıd II minaret, not the main Sultanahmet gate.

Turkish citizens enter free to pray, through the main gate with ID. Reporting from the site indicates the upper gallery is €25 for everyone, Turkish citizens included — the exemption is for worship, not sightseeing.

2. The History and Experience Museum — €25

A different building: 3,200 square metres, thirteen halls, interactive exhibits in 23 languages. It is a museum about Hagia Sophia. It is not Hagia Sophia. Open daily 09:00–20:00, last tickets 19:00, Turkish citizens over 8 get 50% off.

Seeing the mosaics and the exhibition costs €50.

Practicalities and what we cannot confirm

• Dress code: shoes off; women cover hair, shoulders and legs; men cover knees. Bring your own scarf — garments are not lent.
• The Museum Pass Istanbul does not cover either. Neither does anything else.
• The tourist route closes around the five daily prayers and roughly 12:00 to 14:30 on Fridays. Those windows are widely reported but we could not confirm them from an official source — check on the day.

Worth knowing: the mosque’s own official site publishes no ticket, price, hours or dress-code information at all. There is no official online booking channel, so anything selling skip-the-line entry is a reseller.

Source: muze.gov.tr for the museum; Turkish national press for the mosque gallery fee, checked 26 August 2026.

Germ Trips earns a commission if you book through links on this page, at no extra cost to you. Bookings are handled by the travel company you are sent to, not by us. It never changes what we tell you about a ticket. How this works.