Tourism Cyprus, visit Cyprus

Cyprus

Floating on the waters of the European Mediterranean, but pointing longingly towards the shores of Syria, Turkey and Lebanon, Cyprus is an odd mixture. It is a kaleidoscopic blend: its cultural influences are dominated by Western Europe, but its geographic proximity to Asia and Africa gives it more than just a hint of the East. Long coveted by mainland Greece and Turkey, this small island has its own definite and beguiling character.

Whether you know it as the ‘island of sin’ (or ‘fun’) thanks to wild stories from Agia Napa; the country that entered the EU only as a half; or, as the tourist brochures love to point out, ‘the island of Aphrodite’, Cyprus both confirms and confounds the stereotype. Parts of Cyprus have been overrun by keen developers who (depending on who you’re talking to) have either ‘sold the country’s soul’ or ‘are bringing great wealth to the island’.

Mapa de Chipre

Pafos, Chipre

Agia Napa

Ask Cypriots about Agia Napa and they’ll all tell you the same thing: ‘Before 1974, this was a tiny fishing village, with two houses, a monastery and some fishermen. Look at it now!’ Look at it now, indeed. The village started its new life as a tourist resort after the 1974 division, when Famagusta’s Varosia (Maraş) beach strip and resort were locked behind barbed wire and oil barrels. Now infamous as the debauched tourist’s heaven, Agia Napa shoulders the mantle of Cyprus’ top sun-and-fun tourist resort.

An entire little town has been made for (package) tourists, and a lot of it is, frankly, horrific. There are bars that look like dodgy sandcastles, and the Flintstones’ cave bar that greets you with (if you cringe easily, look away now) a ‘Yabba Napa Doo!’. There are pubs with names like the, ahem, ‘Organ Grinder’. Tourists wander about in bikinis, sleep their hangovers off on the beach, and go at it again at night. But such is life in Agia Napa, and there are plenty who love it and large it.

If you arrive in high season (mid-July to mid-August), it will be hard to find accommodation. While hoteliers are more used to package-tour visitors, most places will cater for individuals if a room is available.

Pafos

Linked by a road artery, Kato Pafos (Lower Pafos) and Ktima (Upper Pafos) form an interesting whole. Kato Pafos, the tourist centre, has endless neon lights, bad music, and bars and clubs promising to cover their customers in suds; yet it has the South’s most fascinating archaeological sites. When you’re standing (relatively) alone in the midst of the Pafos Archaeological Site, surrounded by acres of history, a vast blue sky and the wild fennel and caper plants that grow on the Mediterranean’s edges, you feel thousands of years away from the tourist paraphernalia.

Ktima, the real centre of Pafos, has managed to escape the tourist building boom; it’s a calmer place where ‘real Pafiots’ go about their daily business. It has lovely colonial buildings housing government institutions and many of the town’s museums. Its old Turkish quarter, Mouttalos, is run-down and slightly deserted, but gives an idea of how things looked 30 years ago. But the highlight of Ktima is its excellent restaurants.

Montes Troodos, Chipre

Lemesos (Limasol)

Lemesos, still known to many as Limassol (Limasol in Turkish), is one of Cyprus’ most underrated cities. Modelled on what seems to be an American seaside cityscape, the long stretch that is Lemesos has its busy main road running across the entire city, with cafés, shops, restaurants and general life going on to the north, while a long, mediocre but popular beach is lapped by the Mediterranean to the south.

There are two parts to Lemesos: the Old City, a much-renovated, historic part of town with stylish cafés, restaurants, shops and bars around the Old Fishing Harbour and the former Turkish quarter; and the tourist area (also known as Potamos Germasogeias), a rather abysmal stretch of town around 3km to the east of the Old City.

The second-biggest city in the country, Lemesos has several reputations: ‘the city that never sleeps’ is one, and the cliché is thanks to the tourist area’s exuberant nightlife, rivalled only by that of Agia Napa; another is ‘sex town’, with the many ‘cabarets’ (basically brothels) that dot the area around the Rialto Theatre, recently reclaimed from the pimps and rebranded for respectable theatre-goers. Some see Lemesos mainly as an industrial and commercial centre with little to recommend it. But if you like a city that’s rough around the edges, with great places to eat and drink, plus several spots for beach parties and fantastic sights, then pay a visit to Lemesos.

Puerta de Famagusta, Chipre

Kyrenia (Girne) & The North coast

As Northern Cyprus is being touted as ‘pure Mediterranean’ in tourist brochures, images of Kyrenia (Girne) harbour and castle are flooding the advertising spaces on Europe’s urban buses and billboards. So potent is the romantic appeal of Kyrenia’s harbour that it ranks as Cyprus’ most beautiful vista. And although it’s now commercialised and in reality not so romantic, the harbour is the centre of most tourist activity in the North, and the Gothic Kyrenia mountain range and the north coast have a strangely bewitching effect on the visitor.

The area was long ago ‘discovered’ by retired British civil servants, many of whom settled here after years of service in scattered lands throughout the former British Empire, to enjoy the region’s mild climate. Kyrenia became a literary starlet in Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, written by Britain’s most famous colonial son, Lawrence Durrell, who lived in Bellapais (Beylerbeyi), where he wrote his slow-paced nostalgic novel.

Bellapais, one of the island’s most mesmerising villages, features the fascinating ruins of Bellapais Abbey, built in the 12th century by exiled Augustinian monks. Along the Kyrenia (Girne) Range, a displaced French dynasty left behind three Gothic castles, so dreamlike in appearance that one apparently inspired a fairytale production. The strategic position of the castles on the vertebra of the mountain range was carefully arranged, so that the three forts could communicate and warn each other of dangers by lighting torches.

Driving along the north coast from Kyrenia to Kaplıca (Davlos), you can catch the last of ‘how Cyprus used to be’: green, empty fields and a few village houses; unpicked olives soaking up the sun; the space and solitude of a rural Mediterranean landscape that has ceased to exist on much of the island. Unfortunately, the hollow skeletons of luxury villas are starting to flesh out here too. So hurry, before it’s all over.