Nicosia

Nicosia's Venetian walls, completed in 1567 on the design of Giulio Savorgnan, form one of the most complete Renaissance fortification systems in existence — an almost perfect circle of earthen ramparts 4.5 kilometres in circumference with eleven diamond-shaped bastions. The walls were built to resist cannon and did not succeed in 1570, but they survived the centuries intact. All three of the original gates still stand: the Famagusta Gate (now a cultural centre with a vaulted passage), the Paphos Gate, and the Kyrenia Gate (now in the Turkish Cypriot sector). The walls divide Nicosia from the modern suburbs but also enclose the entirety of the Old City — the most historic and culturally dense part of the capital. Beyond the suburbs, the district around the city runs south into the foothills toward a mountain monastery and the remains of an ancient copper kingdom.

Ledra Street is the main pedestrian shopping street of the southern old city, and the thing that makes Nicosia legible is where it stops. You are walking down a normal high street with chain stores and coffee shops on both sides, and then you are not. What stands either side of the gap has been left as it was since 1974: buildings closed with the shutters down, some still holding furniture, stock and signage from before, with observation posts above them. It takes seconds to walk through and the change on the far side is immediate — different script on the shopfronts, a different currency in the tills, and within five minutes' walk the Selimiye Mosque, the former Cathedral of Saint Sophia of the Lusignans, begun in 1209 and completed in the 14th century, whose Gothic west front with its two truncated towers is one of the most striking buildings in Cyprus.

The Cyprus Museum on Museum Street in the south of the city is the island's principal archaeological museum and one of the best in the region for depth of collection. The galleries span from the Neolithic period (c. 9000 BCE) through the Bronze Age, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods to Roman Cyprus. Room 4 contains the extraordinary assembly of approximately 2,000 terracotta figures from the sanctuary of Ayia Irini (7th century BCE) — discovered in 1929, they represent one of the largest intact assemblages of ancient Cypriot terracotta in existence. Room 11 has fine late Bronze Age copper ingots and the Horned God of Enkomi (a 12th-century BCE bronze, one of the masterpieces of Cypriot art). Admission is modest, in line with the other state-run sites, and this is the best value of any of them.

The two most significant sites in the Turkish Cypriot north are within five minutes' walk of each other. The Selimiye Mosque — the former Lusignan Cathedral of Saint Sophia — was begun in 1209 and is one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture outside France, with a three-portal west front and interior proportions that remain impressive despite the removal of its Christian furnishings after 1570. It is an active mosque, so visit outside prayer times, remove your shoes and cover shoulders and knees. The Büyük Han (Great Inn), built in 1572 by the first Ottoman governor of Cyprus, is a large two-storey caravanserai around a central courtyard with a small mosque raised on an elevated platform in the middle of it — sensitively restored, it now houses craft studios, galleries and a café. Both sit in the north's compact historic district and are easily explored on foot.

Laiki Geitonia, meaning “Popular Neighbourhood”, is a restored area of traditional Cypriot townhouses in the south of the Old City, near the Paphos Gate. The narrow lanes have been pedestrianised and the restored Ottoman-period architecture makes it one of the more pleasant areas in the city for walking, shopping for crafts and jewellery, and sitting in an outdoor café. The streets around Ledra Street and Onasagorou Street in the southern old city hold the most concentrated café and restaurant scene in Nicosia. Faneromeni Square, a short walk away, has a church, a covered market and a more local café atmosphere than the pedestrian tourist zone.