BRITISH SCHOOL (MID 19TH CENTURY)
St Sophia Cathedral in Nicosia
titled (lower right)
watercolour
44.5 x 30 cm; framed: 67.5 x 51 cm

Selimiye Mo, historically known as Cathedral of Saint Sophia or Ayasofya Mosque, is a former Christian cathedral converted into a mosque, located in North Nicosia. It has historically been the main mosque on the island of Cyprus. The Selimiye Mosque is housed in the largest and oldest surviving Gothic church in Cyprus possibly constructed on the site of an earlier Byzantine church.
It is the largest surviving historical building in Nicosia, and according to sources, it "may have been the largest church built in the Eastern Mediterranean in the millennium between the rise of Islam and the late Ottoman period". It was the coronation church of the kings of Cyprus.