great sensitivity to light due to its large dome and four apses. Its interior cladding with of gold mosaics is almost complete. The initiative for the mosaic decoration inside the dome was secured by a donation of the Russian Federation, while the larger remainder of the mosaic cladding was successively financed by the Republic of Serbia. Vladimir Putin of Russia visited the church in January 2019 and announced that the Russian state would finance parts of the remaining works in the mosaic cladding. He symbolically laid a stone in a mosaic with the presentation of the Mandylion. Putin was formally invited to attend the consecration of the church, which was then scheduled for the end of 2020 but the ceremony has not yet occurred owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque in July 2020, the Patriarch of Serbia Irinej and Serbia's president Aleksandar Vučić in August 2020 expressed their wish the Saint Sava Church would symbolically replace the Hagia Sophia, after which it was modelled, and become a ″New Hagia Sophia″. In May 2021, the entire Vračar plateau which surrounds the church was declared a spatial cultural-historical unit, and placed under the state protection as the Saint Sava's Plateau. The rationale in government's decision included "symbolical, memorial, cultural-historical, architectural-urban and artistic values of the locality, which represents memory spot of two turning points in Serbian history: Burning of Saint Sava's relics and the First Serbian Uprising". Site The church stands on the Vračar plateau in Belgrade. It is located at the sight axes of the important commercial traffic artery from the old city to the SE outskirts. It is visible from the Ulica Kralja Milana, between Terazije and Slavija Square, which is in extension of the axis. The church is the terminus and landmark of the intended boulevard in the first urban plan of Belgrade made by Emilijan Josimović from the second half of the 19th century. With its architectural form paraphrasing the Byzantine Haghia Sophia, the builders hoped that it will eventually evolve into a universal center of Orthodoxy. Moscow also had at the time lost prominence within Orthodoxy, as the October revolution sidelined religion in Russia and a compensation was intended. The Yugoslav communists also obstructed work on the church, as they banned further construction at the site after World War II. After a long delay, the church rose in