The deal you accept when you book a ticket.

The seller is Istanbul Tourist Information Ltd., a TÜRSAB-licensed travel agency (licence A-7812), registered at Sultanahmet, Fatih, Istanbul, Türkiye. Turkish VAT 3470891204. Referred to in this document as "we," "us," or "ITI."

The buyer is you, the person or entity completing a booking through hagia-sophia.istanbul-tourist-information.com. By completing checkout, you confirm that you are at least 18 years old, or that you are booking on behalf of an adult household who has authorised you to do so.

The venue is Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (Ayasofya-i Kebîr Câmii Şerifi), Sultanahmet, Istanbul. It is owned and operated by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) and the Ministry of Culture. We are not the venue operator. We sell tickets that grant you entry via a Ministry-approved ticketing channel.

We sell a single ticket product: the Hagia Sophia Ticket & Audio Guide, currently priced €35 per adult ticket. Prices are inclusive of VAT and all booking fees. The price displayed on checkout is the price charged.

The ticket grants you a timed entry to Hagia Sophia on the date and time slot you select, plus access to a multi-language audio guide streamed to your own phone. The ticket does not include a human tour guide, food, drink, transportation, or any other product.

Delivery is by email as a QR code, sent within fifteen minutes of payment to the email address you provide at checkout. If the email does not arrive, check your spam folder, then contact our support team for a manual resend.

Timed-entry scanned QR admission at the Ministry's ticketing gate. The gate separates ticketed visitors from walk-up queues. You still pass through a security screening identical to the one walk-up visitors pass through — we explain this honestly in the FAQ because it is the single most common misunderstanding.

An audio guide in eight languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese), streamed to your own phone via a link in your confirmation email. Total runtime 60 minutes, chapterised by landmark, with subtitles. Requires your phone and — ideally — headphones.

Email support from our three-person Hagia Sophia support team (Selin, Mehmet, Zeynep) for questions before, during, and after your visit. Response within two working hours, seven days a week.

Not included: a human tour guide, hotel pickup, the security-check queue skip (impossible to sell — it's operated by the Ministry), or entry to any other Istanbul site. If you want a guided visit, we recommend booking independently with a Ministry-licensed guide; we do not resell guide services.

A booking is confirmed when three conditions are met: (a) your payment has been successfully processed by our payment provider, (b) your QR code has been generated by our external ticketing partner, and (c) the confirmation email has been dispatched to you. In the rare case any of these fail, we refund in full within 72 hours without requiring a request.

Until all three conditions are met, no contract exists between us. If our checkout page claims "Payment successful" but you do not receive a confirmation email within one hour, write to us — we check and either confirm or refund.

Your booking reference begins with HS- followed by eight characters. Keep it for rescheduling, refund requests, or any support correspondence.

Arrive at the ticketed entrance no earlier than fifteen minutes before your slot and no later than the start of your slot. Slots are thirty minutes wide. If the Ministry's gate queue backs up, you will still be admitted within a reasonable time after your slot — but the admission clock runs from arrival, not from booking.

Present the QR on your phone or printed. The Ministry scanner accepts both.

Hagia Sophia is a working mosque. During prayer times (five times daily, posted at the gate) the building closes to visitors. Our slots are timed to fall outside prayer hours, but if the timetable shifts (e.g. for Ramadan), the Ministry may briefly suspend entry. In this case we reschedule you at no cost; see clause 8.

If you arrive later than sixty minutes after your booked slot, admission is at the Ministry's discretion. If they refuse, we will reschedule you free for any future slot, subject to availability.

You may reschedule your booking free of charge up to two hours before your slot, subject to availability on the new date. Email our support team or use the self-service link in your confirmation email.

Within two hours of your slot, rescheduling is offered at our discretion and depends on whether a later slot has capacity. We try to accommodate — email promptly.

There is no limit on the number of times a booking can be rescheduled, provided each reschedule falls outside the two-hour window and within twelve months of the original booking date.

Dress code. Hagia Sophia is a mosque. Shoulders and knees must be covered. Women may be asked to cover their hair; loaner scarves are available at the entrance but we recommend bringing your own for cleanliness. Men in shorts above the knee may be refused entry.

Silence and respect. Visitors outside prayer times are welcome, but the building is still a place of worship. Keep voices low. Turn phone ringers off. Photography is permitted in most areas; flash is not.

The Ministry reserves the right to refuse entry or to remove visitors for conduct it deems disrespectful. We cannot reverse such decisions. If you are refused or removed for reasons outside your control (e.g. misunderstanding at the gate), contact us afterwards and we will investigate.

Hagia Sophia may close to visitors without warning for state events, religious observances (Ramadan adjustments, Eid), security reasons, or building-maintenance emergencies. These are outside our control and we cannot prevent or compensate for them beyond rescheduling or refunding.

If an unexpected closure affects your booking, we will refund in full within 48 hours automatically, or offer a free reschedule — your choice. You do not need to email us to trigger this; we identify affected bookings from the Ministry's closure announcement.

We are not liable for consequential costs (accommodation, flights, missed connecting tours) caused by an unexpected Hagia Sophia closure. We recommend standard travel insurance for any trip built around specific attraction visits.

The full refund policy — all three time windows, edge cases, and our side of the deal — is on our dedicated Refund Policy page. The policy there is the authoritative version and prevails over any summary elsewhere on the site.

Short version: full refund up to 24 hours before your slot, automatic. Between 24 and 2 hours, case-by-case with human judgement (illness and travel disruption usually result in full refund). Less than 2 hours or no-show, 70% refund. The full nuance is in the policy page.

Our liability to you under this agreement is limited to the price you paid for the ticket. If we fail to deliver the ticket, we refund in full. If we err in any other way, we refund in full plus, at our discretion, a goodwill voucher for a future booking.

We are not liable for loss, damage, or injury suffered inside Hagia Sophia itself — that is the Ministry's responsibility as venue operator. We are not liable for consequential costs arising from inability to visit (see clause 8).

Nothing in this agreement limits our liability for fraud, gross negligence, or any liability that cannot be excluded under Turkish consumer law.

We may amend these terms from time to time. Material changes — pricing structure, refund rules, liability allocation — are announced at least 14 days before they take effect, by email to all customers with an active booking.

Your booking is governed by the terms in force at the time of purchase. A later amendment cannot worsen your position on an existing booking.

The version history of this page is archived for three years. Email us for any previous version.

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Republic of Türkiye. Turkish consumer-protection law applies to all purchases made by EU and Turkish residents, and — subject to the choice-of-law rules in your home jurisdiction — its protections are typically available to other buyers as well.

If a dispute arises, please write to us first. The vast majority of concerns are resolved by a human reading your email and responding within 48 hours.

If we cannot resolve the matter together, you may escalate to TÜRSAB (our licensing body), which operates an independent complaints procedure for licensed travel agencies, or to the Turkish consumer arbitration committees (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti) for claims under the statutory threshold.

Legal action, if necessary, is heard in the Istanbul Anatolian Courts (İstanbul Anadolu Mahkemeleri). EU residents retain the rights conferred by applicable EU consumer regulations, which we acknowledge and apply in good faith.