Armenian officials tend to be quick to voice concern over the destruction or deterioration of Armenian churches and monasteries in neighboring Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey. But conservationists complain that the same officials who sound the alarm about sites abroad, often are reticent about preservationist challenges within Armenia itself.
In its 1,700-year-old history, Hagia Sophia in the northwestern town of Iznik has witnessed many turning points. In 787, as a Byzantine church, it housed the Second Council of Nicaea, which restored the veneration of icons to Christianity.
It’s as if Robert Moses, the New York City powerbroker who over a five-decade span in the mid-20th century reshaped the US metropolis in his own image, has come back to life and has set his sights on Samarkand – Uzbekistan’s second city.
