Athens Parthenon Converted to Ottoman Mosque

1458

Following the Ottoman conquest of the Duchy of Athens, the Parthenon, which had served as a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary for nearly a thousand years, was converted into a mosque and a minaret added to its ancient Pentelic marble columns. The building that had been a temple to Athena Parthenos, then a Byzantine cathedral, and now an Ottoman mosque embodied two full millennia of religious conquest in stone.