The UN's cultural agency UNESCO warned Turkey on Friday against converting the Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul into a mosque, urging dialogue before any decision is taken.

After Syria's war whisked away the silkworms from his mulberry trees, 65-year-old Mohammed Saud instead turned his idle home workshop into a silk museum to celebrate the ancient craft.

A French appeals court on Wednesday overturned a child sex assault conviction for Franco-Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf, annulling a suspended prison sentence handed down in November 2018.

On a riverbank in Syria's Hama, Mohammed Sultan tinkers away on a giant water wheel, one of a dwindling number of artisans able to restore the city's ancient wooden landmarks.

Saudi Arabia on Monday opened hajj registration for foreign residents in the kingdom, saying they will make up 70 percent of the pilgrims after it scaled-back the annual ritual due to coronavirus.

The Louvre, the world's most visited museum, reopens after its coronavirus closure Monday, but with nearly a third of its galleries still shut.

Lebanon on Sunday hosted its annual music festival in the ancient northeastern city of Baalbek without an audience for the first time, a move organizers dubbed "an act of cultural resilience" to the coronavirus pandemic as well as the country's unprecedented economic meltdown.

Held amid soaring Roman columns, the Baalbek International Festival was founded in 1956. This year, it's being broadcast on local and regional TV stations and livestreamed on social media in an effort to spread "unity and hope."

Lewis Hamilton led a majority of the 20 Formula One drivers in taking a knee in a gesture of anti-racism solidarity on the grid before the start of the belated season-opening Austrian Grand Prix on Sunday.

The Louvre in Paris, the world's most visited museum and home to the Mona Lisa, reopens on Monday but with coronavirus restrictions in place and parts of the complex closed to visitors.

Turkey's top court convened Thursday to consider whether Istanbul's emblematic landmark and former church Hagia Sophia can be redesignated as a mosque, a ruling which could inflame tensions with the West.