6-2-15. Nicosia, Cyprus
I left my hotel early, and drove along a series of increasingly narrow and precipitous roads to the isolated mountain castle of Kantara. With the exception of a few stray cats, I had the castle to myself, and spent a pleasant hour among the windswept ruins, admiring the awesome views in every direction.
Atop the highest tower, where the breeze was almost strong enough to knock me off my feet, I braced for a few minutes against the only surviving wall, trying to get a level picture of its twisted Gothic window. Away to the south, brown scrubland and golden fields ran down the coast toward Famagusta. Northeast, the tapering Karpaz peninsula pointed toward Turkey. West, the black crags of the Besparmak mountains jutted into a cloudless blue sky.
North Nicosia was considerably less attractive. Founded by the Lusginans, fortified by the Venetians, and conquered by the Ottomans, the old city of Nicosia has many similarities to Famagusta. Unlike its eastern counterpart, however, it is divided almost exactly in half between the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, both of which claim it as their capital. The relative impoverishment of the north, however, has severely hampered modern development, save in the streets immediately adjacent to the pedestrian border crossing to the south. Here, recent renewal projects have cleaned up the area around the Selimiye Mosque –another converted Gothic cathedral –and the Buyuk Han, an Ottoman inn and market repurposed for restaurants and souvenir shops.
Crossing into the Republic of Cyprus, however, I was immediately struck by the signs of prosperity. South Nicosia feels like a modern (if small) European city; its northern counterpart reminded me of an Anatolian market center.
I was lured into south Nicosia by two of the finest museums in Cyprus. The first, the Cyprus Museum, houses the national archaeological collection. Though a bronze statue of Septimius Severus was the only really first class artifact on display, the well-organized and thoroughly labeled galleries provided a good overview of Cypriot history from the Stone Age to the Ottomans. I especially liked a room of Classical and Hellenistic clay figurines, deposited as votives at sanctuaries, which depicted a variety of scenes from daily life.
The other museum was the grandly named Archbishop Makarios cultural center, which housed a collection of icons, frescoes, and mosaics from Cypriot churches. Although I have never quite acquired the taste requisite to really appreciate icons, I was struck by the power of a few of the oldest examples. The mosaics on display, meager fragments of walls and ceilings torn apart by Turkish smugglers, were more depressing than inspiring.
I walked slowly back to north Nicosia along the edge of the Dead Zone, a two- to three block strip fenced off and closed since 1974; whole streets of crumbling houses and shops, untouched for forty years, were visible here and there through rusty loops of razor wire. Back through the barriers, I spent some time around the Selimiye mosque, trying to photograph the façade in the raking light of sunset. I closed the day with a slow walk through the faded streets of north Nicosia, which funneled me back to the blue door of my hotel.