Larnaca (Larnaka)

A shallow salt lake sits immediately inland of the airport and behaves like two different places across the year. Through the winter it fills with water and with birds — flamingos in the thousands, along with a great many migrating waders — and the standard view of it, from the palm grove on the western shore, is one of the most photographed on the island. Through the summer it dries to a hard white crust and the birds are gone entirely, which catches out visitors who arrive in August expecting the picture. On the lake's edge, among those palms, stands a mosque and tomb complex that is one of the most significant Islamic sites in the eastern Mediterranean, marking the burial place of a woman related to the Prophet's household who died here in the seventh century. It is an active place of pilgrimage and also open and welcoming to visitors: cover your shoulders and knees, remove your shoes at the threshold, keep quiet inside, and do not photograph people at prayer.

The old quarter of the town is built around a stone church, heavy and low with a distinctive bell tower, raised over what tradition holds is the tomb of Lazarus. The story runs that after he was raised he came to Cyprus, became the first bishop of the city that stood here, and was buried in it a second time — and the crypt beneath the church, which you can go down into, holds a sarcophagus said to be his. Whatever a visitor makes of the account, the building is a good one: a ninth-century core, an interior dense with icons and dark wood, and a carved screen that repays a slow look. It is an active parish church rather than a monument, so services take precedence over sightseeing and the usual dress rules apply.

Inland from the coast, on a hillside above a river, are the remains of one of the most important Neolithic settlements in the eastern Mediterranean: a village of round stone houses, walled and terraced, occupied from around the seventh millennium before the common era. That is older than the pyramids by a wide margin and older than almost anything a visitor is likely to have stood in. The excavated foundations are what survive, but several full-size houses have been rebuilt on site using the original materials and methods, and walking into one is the thing that makes the place land — a low dark circular room with a hearth, which is what a house was here for thousands of years. The site is steep, unshaded and set on a hill, so it wants an early start and reasonable shoes — heat rather than terrain is what catches people out here.

Up in the hills the stone village of Lefkara has made the same needlework for centuries — a geometric cut-and-drawn linen embroidery that is distinct enough to be recognised internationally, and which was carried around Europe by the village's own travelling salesmen rather than by any importer. It is still made here, in doorways and front rooms, by women who will happily explain what they are doing, and the village also has a long tradition of silver filigree. The place itself is worth the drive independently of shopping: steep cobbled lanes, blue shutters, heavy stone, and a scale small enough to walk in an hour. Buy from the makers rather than from the larger shops if the craft is the reason you came — and be aware that a great deal of machine-made work is sold in the village alongside the real thing.

Off this coast lies a large roll-on ferry that sank on her maiden voyage in 1980 and now rests on her side in clear, accessible water, largely intact, with her cargo of lorries still aboard. She is consistently ranked among the best wreck dives in the world and is the single reason a substantial number of visitors come to this district at all — reachable by beginners on the shallower sections and deep enough to occupy technical divers for years. Inland and in a different register entirely, a monastery sits on an isolated peak with a very long view over the whole southern plain. It keeps a strict rule that admits men only, which is not a formality and is worth checking before anyone drives up expecting to go in.