After many years of pricey raffles, the local Greek Orthodox Church constructed a new building. While the original was all white and otherwise what I think of as stereotypically Greek, this new building if I didn’t already know otherwise, I’d think was Middle Eastern, even Muslim (except for the cross obviously). Is there some reason for the similarity, just a coincidence, or all in my imagination?
It bears a resemblance to Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which was originally an Eastern Orthodox Christian church, sans minarets (it’s now a museum).
You’ve got it backwards - many Middle-Eastern mosques, particularly in Turkey, are modeled after Orthodox churches. One prominent example would be the Blue Mosque, which is modeled to no small degree on theAya Sofia (Hagia Sophia), built by the Byzantine Empire some one thousand years earlier.
Well…the Greeks did came first in the ME.
Round arches and domes were adopted from Byzantine religious architecture for use in early mosques. So it may not be so much not that Greek religious architecture looks Muslim, as that Muslim architecture looks Greek :).
ETA: Beaten to it!
Doesn’t strike me as particularly Islamic in character. It’s got kind of a shopping-mall Byzantine look to it. This is probably pinging your radar because it’s a look common in the Near East (Turkey and environs)- an area that is historically a crossroads of East and West. So you are seeing these Eastern influences and thinking “Islam!”
Guy living in Greece here. Although there are no two churches alike, the new building looks like your typical Greek Orthodox church.
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You won’t find here a church like the original building, unless it is from some other denomination.
Here are a couple of photos that I’ve taken of Greek Orthodox churches: one in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and the cathedral in Columbus, Ohio. They look like the same style of architecture, and not at all Muslim.