6-1-15. Famagusta, Northern Cyprus
After breakfast, I drove a few miles south to the vast and neglected site of Salamis. For nearly a millennium, this was the cultural, economic, ecclesiastical, and (usually) political center of Cyprus, one of the grandest and wealthiest cities in the eastern Mediterranean. Little of this splendor was evident from the unpaved parking lot, where my car’s arrival scattered stray dogs sniffing for edible trash. A feel of general neglect permeated the excavations; virtually no archaeological work seems to have been conducted here in the forty years since the Turkish invasion, and precious little basic maintenance. The Turkish Republic of North Cyprus has, admittedly, bigger problems than the upkeep of its archaeological sites (such as the rest of the world refusing to acknowledge its existence); and judging from the fact that I saw no other tourists in my four hours onsite, I can’t imagine Salamis is really paying for itself these days.
Partly on account of such official indifference, and partly as a result of centuries of stone-robbing, the site is more tantalizing than fulfilling. The best-excavated and most impressive section is immediately adjacent to the parking lot, where a large bath-gymnasium complex and adjacent palaestra were uncovered in the fifties. Though stripped of their marble facing, the walls of the bath stand nearly to their original height, garnished with alcoves that once held statues. A few of these niches have even retained traces of their original mosaic decoration; more remarkably still, an arch in the main bathing block still bears fragments of a third-century fresco. The columns of the palaestra were re-erected in the sixties. In the decades since, tall grass has grown over the ancient exercise yard, lapping the edges of a fine opus sectile floor.
The gymnasium once adjoined a large stadium, now little more than a scrub-filled valley. The lower tiers of the nearby theater, badly plundered in antiquity, have been baldly restored. A few more monumental ruins in the vicinity – another bath, a fish market, and portions of a long colonnaded street – were partially excavated; many more, however, were visible only as shapeless mounds of masonry or lonely columns protruding through a sea of scrub and dead grass. Following a network of gravel tracks, I passed among these hints of ancient grandeur, pausing at the widely scattered areas that had been subject to archaeological investigation in the fifties and sixties. Of the forum, once a massive oblong plaza lined with colonnades, only a single reconstituted column, a sea of stumps, and the foundations of a temple of Zeus survive; the enormous Basilica of St. Epiphanius, the greatest church of Byzantine Cyprus, is only slightly better preserved.
The highlight of my long morning at Salamis was probably the so-called Kambanopetra Basilica. The ruins of this large late antique church – and particularly the beautiful inlaid floors of the adjoining bishop’s palace –were impressive enough; but what made them memorable was the sparkling sea beyond. Fighting my way through thorny scrub to the beach, I walked for nearly a mile along a narrow strip of sand, looking for the remains of Salamis’ harbor. Here and there, lines of ancient masonry were visible through the clear water. Some were clearly the foundations of stone quays; others, half-protruding from the waves some hundred yards from shore, were almost certainly part of the seawall. A fresh breeze off the Mediterranean sighed through dead grass on the dunes over the ancient harbor district; ancient walls emerged from the sand where storms had bitten had into the coastline, and the pebbly margin of the beach was red with fragments of Roman and Byzantine pottery.
The necropolis of Salamis stretched for miles on the landward side of the ancient city. Centuries of intensive cultivation have destroyed most of this necropolis, but some of the oldest and most spectacular burials, the so-called Tombs of the Kings, have been conserved as a diffuse open air museum. Most of the eight or nine open to the public date to the eighth and seventh centuries BC, when Salamis was ruled by dynasts who exercised control over much of eastern Cyprus. The most impressive of the tombs now visible were built for these petty kings. Each consisted of a small stone-lined chamber, where the body was interred with rich offerings of gold, bronze, and ivory; and a monumental ramp (dromos) fronting the burial chamber, where the horses or mules that pulled the funeral cart were ritually sacrificed, sometimes in the company of an unfortunate royal servant. Tomb and dromos were then covered with a tall mound of earth.
My next stop was the monastery of the Apostle Barnabas, visible from the tombs beyond a series of freshly harvested wheat fields. For centuries, pilgrims traveled from every corner of Cyprus to visit the saint’s remains; and although the sarcophagus has been empty for more than a millennium – the body was removed to Constantinople for safekeeping in the tenth century – Orthodox Cypriots still come here to pray. The martyrion above the tomb is modern; but a narrow stone stair leads to the ancient crypt, where a cluster of icons and votive candles marks the apostle’s former resting place. Beside the shrine is the monastery itself, now re-purposed as the unofficial archaeological museum of northern Cyprus. I was not overly impressed with the collections, which consisted mostly of second-rate icons and ill-labeled pottery; the church and cloister themselves were, however, peaceful and well-maintained – unfortunately something of a rarity in northern Cyprus.
I spent most of the afternoon in the fascinating city of Famagusta, only ten kilometers south of Salamis. For three centuries, under Lusignan kings and then the Venetians, this was one of the great trading centers of the eastern Mediterranean. Easternmost outpost of Latin Christianity (once the Mamluks swept away the last remnants of Outremer), the city was adorned with a series of splendid Gothic churches. Between these houses of worship, Famagusta’s notoriously dissolute inhabitants debauched in splendid mansions, stirring from their revels only long enough to profit handsomely from one another. The monuments of piety and the products of commerce were alike embraced by a massive series of defenses, perfected by the Venetians in the mid-sixteenth century under the threat of Ottoman invasion. When the Turks came in 1572, the city held out for nine months, finally capitulating when its garrison was almost incapacitated by starvation. Despite promises of clemency, the Ottoman commander had his Venetian counterpart flayed alive in the city square, expelled all Christian inhabitants, and ordered the soaring Gothic churches to be converted to mosques. Famagusta languished under Turkish rule, shrinking to a tiny fraction of its former size; even today, much of the area within the Venetian walls remains empty. Though partially revived by the British, and the center of a burgeoning tourist district before the Turkish invasion of 1974, the old city of Famagusta has, like so much of northern Cyprus, a curiously neglected feel. The gaunt skeletons of Gothic churches loom over knots of dilapidated houses, and the massive Venetian ramparts are carpeted in dead grass.
I parked almost in the shadow of the former St. George of the Greeks, a towering Gothic shell whose inner walls still bear faint impressions of frescoes. A few blocks away, the massive Cathedral of St. Nicholas, a mosque since the Ottoman conquest, marks the city center. Although the towers were damaged during the 1572 siege, the exterior remains virtually unchanged from the Lusignan period; I especially admired the carving of the tympanum over the main door. Shedding my shoes beneath an enormous Sycamore Fig (said to be as old as the cathedral), I spent some time in the whitewashed interior, which retains much of its Gothic dignity.
After an hour spent among the ruined churches in the outskirts of the old city, I climbed to the top of the massive wall, and walked about halfway around the circuit. Designed in an era conscious of the power of gunpowder, the defenses of Famagusta were to intended to both absorb and return cannon fire; massive ravelins (advanced defensive towers with cannon platforms) projected from every corner of the walls sloped to deflect all but the most concentrated and direct cannon fire. The views from atop the walls were predictably spectacular. The former cathedral dominated the old city, complemented by the broken reflections of a half-dozen Gothic ruins. South of the walls, the crumbling tower blocks of Varosha, a Greek resort suburb occupied by the Turks since 1974, presented a modern coda.
