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Blue Mosque, Istanbul, Turkey, 1998

Rendered blue in this photograph by reflected light from the sky above and the Bosporus Strait below, Istanbul's Blue Mosque actually got its name from the tile covering its interior. Built for Sultan Ahmet I in the early 1600s, the Ottoman mosque was the first, aside from Mecca's Kaaba shrine, with six minarets instead of the usual four.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "City at the Crossroads," March/April 1998, National Geographic Traveler magazine)

Photograph by Steve McCurry