Holy cities

More than 8,000 truckloads of debris are being carried every day in the quake-hit province of Hatay's Antakya and Defne district, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has stated.

Tourists in Rome checking out the Pantheon, Italy's most-visited cultural site, will soon be charged a 5-euro ($5.28) entrance fee under an agreement signed on March 16 by Italian culture and church officials.

Following the Feb. 6 earthquakes that caused massive destruction in the country's south, the first Sunday mass has taken place in front of the ruins of collapsed Antakya Protestant Church in the southern province of Hatay.

Mehmet Alkan, a shoe-sole manufacturer in Turkey's earthquake-hit south, doesn't know what will become of his company after some of his 220 employees died and half fled, reflecting the difficult transformation ahead for industry in the region.

Turkish historians have lashed out at the world's richest man Elon Musk for his "1453 Constantinople" tweet, hinting that Istanbul was conquered, not with a military victory, but due to an open gate forgotten by Byzantine soldiers.

"Suddenly one ran after another to take the cross. Thus, by groups of twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, they put up banners and began to journey to Jerusalem"

Some 200 mosaics unearthed in the southern province of Hatay during archaeological excavations conducted by a commission set up before 1939, the year when the city joined the Turkish Republic, are exhibited abroad, as the artifacts found were shared among the commission members, says Hatice Pamir from Mustafa Kemal University's Archaeology Department.

The historic walls of Istanbul have been transferred to a digital environment after four years of work. Now the walls, with all their information and photographs, can be viewed on the website www.istanbulsurlari.ku.edu.tr with a single click.

A prominent Turkish architect made a proposal to give the old names of Istanbul into some corners or regions of the metropolis to remind the inhabitants of the cultural and historical richness of the city.

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The Saudi Arabian administration has decided to terminate the activities of 8 Turkish schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education operating in the capital Riyadh and other provinces at the end of the 2020-2021 academic year, according to information gathered by diplomatic sources on April 28.