Abandoned Places

12 Abandoned Places Of Cyprus

Cyprus is an island that carries its history on the surface. You do not need to dig for it. Drive inland from Limassol, wind up into the Troodos range, or cut across to the occupied north, and you will find places that stopped in time without warning. A church sealed off by barbed wire. An asbestos mine the size of a small mountain. A ranch with its fences still standing and no one inside.  A luna park that closed before most visitors were born. These are not obscure footnotes to Cypriot history. They are physical evidence of the forces that shaped this island across the 20th century, political division, industrial collapse, economic migration, and the kind of quiet neglect that…

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14 Abandoned Villages of Cyprus

Cyprus is one of the most historically layered islands in the Mediterranean. Underneath the resort towns and the beach clubs and the well-worn tourist trails, there is another Cyprus entirely. It shows up in the form of stone houses with no roofs, churchyards with no congregation, and village squares where the only regular visitors are photographers and the occasional goat.  The abandoned villages of Cyprus number in the dozens, scattered across every district on the island. Some were emptied by war. Some by flood. Some by the slow, quiet pull of better economic prospects in the cities. This guide covers 16 of them, what they were, why they emptied, and what you will actually find if you make the drive…

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Cyprus Green Line Today

The Green Line takes its name from a green chinagraph pencil used by British Major General Peter Young on December 30, 1963. He drew a ceasefire line on a map of Nicosia during a twelve-hour meeting following intercommunal violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. That pencil mark became the basis for one of Europe's most visible political divisions. Today the Green Line stretches 180 kilometers from Kato Pyrgos in the west to Paralimni in the east, cutting across the entire island. It varies from just 3.3 meters wide in central Nicosia to 7.4 kilometers wide in rural areas. The buffer zone covers 346 square kilometers, roughly 3.7 percent of Cyprus's total land area. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989,…

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