Akdağmadeni Church

Located in the Yeşildere (formerly Tahmaz) neighbourhood in the centre of Akdağmadeni district, the Akdağmadeni Church is dated to 1862 by its inscription. Also known as the Hagios Haralambos Church, its front façade is built of cut stone while the other façades are faced with cut marble, with a round-arched entrance at the front. Above the entrance door are 11 Greek inscriptions, with two more beneath the frame, totalling 13. The rectangular interior is divided into three sections running east-west by eight round columns, connected to one another by round arches and timber tie-beams, and crosses and geometric decorations can still be seen here and there on the interior plaster. When the church was built in the mid-19th century, Akdağmadeni was a mining town whose population included large numbers of Armenians, who had settled there from the 1750s onward to work the local lead and alum mines, alongside a substantial Greek Orthodox community; the town gained district status in 1871. This non-Muslim community largely left the region during the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1924-1927. Placed under protection in 1983, the church today stands as one of the rare surviving witnesses both to that vanished community and to the 19th-century church architecture of the region.