In Trabzon, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, the bells of old Greek schools still ring. The buildings that once educated Pon...

In Trabzon, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, the bells of old Greek schools still ring. The buildings that once educated Pontic Greek children are still standing, and some of them are still used as schools today, their bells sounding across a city that was once the heart of the Pontic Greek world. The most well-known of these buildings is the Frontistirio, the former Greek high school that has since been converted into a museum. But the story goes further than that single building. Several other school structures from the same era remain part of the city's fabric, their bells still ringing on schedule as they have for well over a century. Trabzon was the centre of Pontic Greek civilization until the population exchange and deportations of the early twentieth century stripped the region of most of its Greek population. The communities that had built those schools, filled those classrooms, and rung those bells were gone within a generation. The buildings outlasted them. More than a hundred years after the deportations, Turkish children now sit in some of those same classrooms. The bells that once called Pontic Greek students to class still function, still ring, still mark the hours, in a city that carries the bones of a vanished civilization whether it acknowledges them or not. The Frontistirio draws visitors who know what it was. The other buildings simply continue, quiet monuments to a world that was erased but never entirely disappeared. #PonticGreeks #Trabzon #GreekHistory