Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani began his first official visit to post-Assad Syria on Friday with a tour of the landmark Umayyad mosque in Damascus.
"It's a great pleasure... to be here this morning to visit and pay homage to all Syrian believers," he told AFP from the mosque, which is about 1,300 years old and he described as "one of the most beautiful" in the world.
He is expected to meet Syria's de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa and his counterpart Asaad al-Shaibani at the presidential palace later in the morning.