Athens Falls to the Ottomans

1456

The Ottoman conquest of the Duchy of Athens reduced the Acropolis to a garrison strongpoint and the Parthenon to a Turkish mosque. Classical Athens, which had survived Ostrogoths, Slavs, Franks, and Catalans, now became a provincial administrative center of the sultan. Its surviving Greek population dwindled further. The Parthenon's conversion to a mosque left the structure largely intact until a Venetian shell exploded its powder magazine in 1687.