Cunda Island

This article is about Cunda Island in Turkey, for Cunda in Hinduism.

View from a fish restaurant in Cunda Island

Cunda Island, also called Alibey Island, (Turkish: Cunda Adası, Alibey Adası; Greek: Εκατόνησα Hekatonisa or Μοσχονήσι/Moshonisi) is a small island in the northwestern Aegean Sea off the coast of Ayvalık, part of Balıkesir Province of Turkey. With an area of 23 km², it is by far the largest island in the Ayvalık Islands group. It is located 16 km east of Lesbos, Greece. The population numbered about 5,000 in 2000.

Cunda is linked to Ayvalık on the mainland by a causeway. The island has a typical resort town, Alibey, and a bus and ferry link to Ayvalık.

The island’s former Greek population was expelled in the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey and was replaced by Muslims from Crete, Cretan Turks. The main landmark of Alibey village remains the large former Greek Orthodox cathedral, now abandoned and dilapidated.

Broken stairs at interior of Cunda Cathedral

Poroselene bay in the north of the island is probably the island’s major “sight.” In antiquity, it was the home of a dolphin who saved a drowning boy, mentioned by Pausanias.

In 2007 after a two-year-work, all 551 buildings in Cunda Island were inspected and registered by Turkish Science Academy and Yıldız Technical University Faculty of Architecture within the "Turkey Culture Inventory Project".^[1]

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See also

• List of islands of Turkey
• Aegean Islands
• Cunda Adası

References

1. ^ NTV MSNBC. "Cunda evlerine nüfus kağıdı" (in Turkish). http://arsiv.ntvmsnbc.com/news/425255.asp. Retrieved 2009-03-31. 

External links