Few of the visitors to the state of Aivalio opposite Mytilene know when they pass outside a ruin, at the southern end of the Roman palace, that in front of them is the church of the Holy Trinity! The 11th state parish was founded in 1846, according to an inscription outside the now-collapsed sanctuary niche.
A church to celebrate days like this, how the people of Aivalio know how to celebrate …
According to Dimitros Psarros, author of the now monumental volume “The Aivali and Aeolian Minor Asia” (Publication of the Educational Foundation of the National Bank 1917), the Holy Trinity was founded to meet the needs of the new inhabitants of the State when Aivali was rebuilt after the disaster of 1821 The money for its construction was collected by a “managan” from people who at that time were many but his name was not kept.
The classic three-aisled basilica, from the so-called “lesbian”, with the gynaeconite outside stepping on the exonarthex. But also a “mature” work in the Aivalio version of this particular church style, a direct descendent of the pavilion of the old church, with the roof of the central aisle raised to allow light from the interior windows.
Its courtyard is said to be very beautiful, with a bell tower as well as an exonarthex colonnade, all made of local red volcanic ignimbrite and small floors. The surrounding houses that have been preserved are also beautiful, among them opposite and a little to the north is the house of Ilias Mello, Ilias Venezis.
In 1922, after the Asia Minor Disaster and the evacuation of the city, the church was turned into a warehouse for the Turkish tobacco monopoly!
In 1929, in a rare but unique Aivaliot – contraband way, some of the icons of the iconostasis of the Holy Trinity arrived in Mytilene and were later placed in the church of Agios Nikolaos on the Upper Stairs, the historic Vigla mosque of Ottoman Mytilene which became a church. In the Mytilene newspaper “Eleftheros Logos” in 1929, a small article signed by “Lazarus”, says (with the spelling of the time): “The mosque is consecrated and the consecration is sung. The world enters the Temple to worship of the holy images. And the moments are touching when the refugees from Ayvali put their lips to the images that know them with tenderness. – Ours is good – of the Holy Trinity ancient icons brought from the Holy Trinity of Kydonia by the Turkish Captains and sold to the Community of Kydonia. The refugees were rewarded by their refugee saints.”
In the 1980s, Aivaliotissa Agia Triada had not yet begun to “uproot”. It still resides in the tobacco warehouses of the Turkish monopoly. To keep the tobacco and prevent the sacks from being placed on top of each other, as a result of which they lose their moisture or even rot, a loft was built at a point that divides the church horizontally in two.
In the good moments of Greek-Turkish relations, the Greek and Turkish ICOMOS plan to jointly preserve the Holy Trinity in Aivali and the Geni Mosque in Mytilene.
Nothing happened…
At the beginning of the 21st century, the roof of Agia Triada began to leak. The upper part of the church built by “Baghdati”, a plastered wooden wall, began to crumble. Large sections began to collapse.
The yard became a parking lot. The effort to restore the Municipality of Aivali, “running” in the epidemic of the coronavirus. He had time to start digging around. The foundations of the wall, the bell tower with the main entrance and the sanctification of Agia Paraskevi were revealed.
Today, only the ground floor part of the church is standing, not the whole, the eastern part has collapsed and the building materials have been looted.
They said it would be returned. In the context of the economic crisis that plagued the neighboring country, it was even more difficult.
I hope that at some point Holy Trinity will regain some of its lost beauty. Stop being another monument to intolerance, one of these on both sides of the Aegean.