Byzantine Church

The Byzantine Church/Kesik minare standing in the streets of Kaleiçi in Adalia/Antalya was originally built as a Roman temple in the 2nd century AD. In the 7th century, the Roman temple was destroyed and sacked and a Greek Byzantine church in honor of the Virgin Mary was built atop the ruins of the temple, but it was heavily damaged in the 7th century during the Arab invasions. In the 9th century it was repaired again. The church was converted into a mosque when the Sultanate of Rum acquired Antalya in the early 13th century, which was when the actual minaret was added. In 1361, when the crusader King of Cyprus took Adalia from the Seljuks, it became a Church again, only to become converted into a mosque . The main building of the Byzantine Church was destroyed in a fire around the 1800s, but the minaret survived as the Kesik Minare.Most of the structure currently is from the Greek/Byzantine period and when the Church became a mosque the Sultan Aladdin Mosque/Panagia Greek Orthodox church was built for the Greeks of Antalya.