Guide
The Çınarlı Mosque in the Ayvalık district of Balıkesir was built in 1880 as the Greek Orthodox church of Saint George and was turned into a mosque in 1923, after the exchange of populations.
It was designed and built by Emmanuel Kounas, an architect from Ayvalık, to meet the needs of the town's Greek Orthodox community, which had grown richer and more numerous through the nineteenth century.
In the conversion a mihrab was added, while the iconostasis marking the division between the bema and the nave was kept, and the essential architecture of the building was not altered. A minaret with two balconies was added. Over time local people came to call the building the Çınarlı Mosque, after the ancient plane trees standing around it.
The building is laid out on a domed cross plan. It is built of rubble and cut stone, its outer face clad in the local stone. Paired windows and slender columns with Corinthian capitals stand out on the front, and the interior shows the influence of the baroque. The gallery floor, which runs around the building in a U, is carried on columns with Corinthian capitals, and plaster ornament of plant forms fills the vaults.
The iconostasis dividing the bema from the nave carries the richest ornament in the building, with acanthus leaves, curling plant stems and figures of swans. The mihrab added at the conversion shows the marks of late Ottoman architecture and is worked with intricate plant ornament.
