A 300-year-old Armenian church has been put up for sale in Turkey for $1.5 million, state-run Anadolu Agency reported Thursday, February 25.
An advert on the property website Sahibinden shows the ramshackle, three-story building in the heart of Bursa, northwest Turkey, is located near the tombs of the fifth Ottoman sultan, Mehmed I, and the 14th century tomb of Bayezid I’s adviser and son-in-law.
Real estate agent Tayfun Ozengirler said the building in the Setbasi neighborhood was registered in as a historical monument in 1986.
“The area where the church is situated was once inhabited by Armenians,” Ozengirler said. “You can smell the history on every corner.”
Bursa, the capital of the Ottoman Empire before the capture of Constantinople in 1453, was a center of Armenian culture, with the Armenian Patriarchate based in Setbasi before moving to Istanbul.
Ozengirler said he had received a number of queries concerning the advert. “No one has agreed on the price so far though,” he told Anadolu Agency.