The Agios Nikolaos Church, also known as the Adana Greek Orthodox Church, has been transformed into a public library, in the latest twist of its nearly two-century-long history.
Originally built in 1845 by the local Greek Orthodox community following the 1839 Tanzimat Edict, which granted non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire the right to establish places of worship and education, the church stood as a religious and cultural landmark for decades.
After the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece, the church was abandoned. It was later repurposed as the Adana Archaeological Museum, one of the first museums of the Republic, until 1972.
From then on, it functioned as a museum depot, before reopening in 1983 as the Adana Ethnography Museum. Following a comprehensive restoration between 2013 and 2015, it was renamed the Kuruköprü Church Memorial Museum.
In recent weeks, the historic building has welcomed a new community of readers. After its longtime home at the Sabancı Cultural Center was damaged in the Feb. 6, 2023, earthquake and slated for demolition, the Adana Provincial Public Library has relocated to the church.
The church’s striking architecture now offers a unique reading atmosphere, with its walls lined by the library’s most popular collection, which includes hundreds of literary classics.
Adana has historical connections to the Greek world
Adana, located in southern Turkey, has a long and layered history, and has historical connections to the broader Greek world, especially through the Hellenistic and Byzantine eras.
After the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC), his empire was divided among his generals, and the region around Adana came under the control of the Seleucid Empire, a Hellenistic state founded by Seleucus I Nicator. The Seleucids established many Greek cities and spread Greek culture, language, and urban planning across Anatolia, including in Cilicia, the region where Adana is located.
Adana itself was influenced by Greek administration and culture during this period.
It later became part of the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire which was deeply rooted in Greek language, Orthodox Christianity and Greco-Roman traditions. During this time, Greek was the administrative and liturgical language, and Adana had a Greek-speaking Christian population.
Under Ottoman rule, Adana had a Greek Orthodox minority community, as was common in many cities across the empire. This population remained until the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, when Orthodox Christians from Turkey were moved to Greece, and Muslims from Greece to Turkey.
Although few traces of the Greek population remain in modern-day Adana, some architecture and cultural echoes, and historical references still point to its multi-ethnic past.