Ayvalık's old town is one of the best-preserved 19th-century Greek townscapes in Turkey. The neighbourhood survived the 1923 population exchange largely intact — the Greek Orthodox families who had built these houses were gone within months, but the buildings remained. Walking the cobbled lanes today, you pass three-storey stone mansions with carved wooden balconies, arched doorways, and shuttered windows that have barely changed since they were built.
Several of the old Orthodox churches have been converted to mosques — the most prominent is Saatli Camii, formerly the Church of Agios Yiorgios, whose clock tower remains a landmark. Others have become museums or simply stand empty, their frescoes fading behind locked iron grilles. The neighbourhood isn't a museum piece; people live here, and the ground floors of many old houses now hold small shops, carpet dealers, and cafes. But the residential streets away from the main drag are genuinely quiet and worth getting lost in.
The best approach is to wander without a fixed route. Start from the central market area and work uphill. Morning light hits the stone facades well, and the streets are coolest and least busy before 10am.