It provided a major impetus for the rapid expansion of Greek education throughout the Pontus region,[1] on the south coast of the Black Sea.

[2] The school was initially housed at the Sümela Monastery, with its main goal being the cultivation of the national and religious identity of the local Greek communities.

In 1817, Savvas Triantafyllidis became director of the Phrontisterion and the institution reached a higher level of educational standards as a result of the modern Greek Enlightenment.

[2] It was a three-story building consisting of 36 classrooms,[4] standing above the sea shore corniche of the city near the now destroyed Greek Orthodox Church of Gregory of Nyssa and the Armenian Cathedral.

The school closed in November 1921, during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), while the following years the local Greek communities left the region as part of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey.