Rome Newsroom, Aug 21, 2020 / 04:30 am
A month after the former cathedral Hagia Sophia was converted from a museum into a mosque, another Istanbul church-museum, renowned for its exquisite Byzantine mosaics, will undergo the same transformation.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ordered Friday that the 700-year-old Chora Church -- currently the Kariye Museum -- be turned into a fully functioning mosque.
The building's history mirrors that of the famous former Byzantine cathedral Hagia Sophia.
Holy Savior in Chora is a 4th-century Greek Orthodox church whose structure was originally part of a monastery in Byzantine Constantinople.