Islamic mosque
In 1456, Ottoman Turkish forces invaded Athens and laid siege to a Florentine army defending the Acropolis until June 1458, when it surrendered to the Turks. The Turks may have briefly restored the Parthenon to the Greek Orthodox Christians for continued use as a church. Some time before the close of the fifteenth century the Parthenon became a mosque.
The precise circumstances under which the Turks appropriated it for use as a mosque are unclear; one account states thatMehmed II ordered its conversion as punishment for an Athenian plot against Ottoman rule. The apse became a mihrab,the tower previously constructed during the Roman Catholic occupation of the Parthenon was extended upwards to become a minaret, a minbar was installed, the Christian altar and iconostasis were removed, and the walls were whitewashed to cover icons of Christian saints and other Christian imagery