Taxiarchs Church (Ayvalık)

The Taxiarchs Church in Ayvalık is considered the oldest known church in the town and today functions as a monument museum. Its building history unfolded in three main phases: a small original place of worship is dated to the fifteenth century, while an inscription and surviving frescoes from 1753 point to a second phase in which it was rebuilt as a two-story, three-domed basilica. A later inscription of 1844 records a third rebuilding, after which the church took its present basilical form, covered with barrel vaults carried on wooden supports. After the population exchange, the building passed out of religious use and was used as a storage depot by the state tobacco monopoly from 1927 onward, standing empty for long stretches afterward. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism restored it starting in 2012, and it reopened to visitors in 2013 as the Taxiarchs Monument Museum, administered under the Balıkesir Kuva-yi Milliye Museum.