With new hotels and restaurants, plus a burgeoning student population, Cyprus’s budget-friendly capital is on the up.
However much you’ve read about Europe’s last divided capital, it’s still a surreal experience sitting in Nicosia’s Giagia Victoria cafe. Keeping you company as you sip treacly Cypriot coffee and chomp syrupy semolina and custard cake are oil drums, sandbags and razor wire. Beyond them is a no-man’s land of crumbling buildings peppered with bullet holes, frozen in time since the Turkish invasion of 1974.
Downtrodden for decades, the southern side of the capital of Cyprus has been experiencing a rebirth in recent years. Stylish new hotels have opened, including The Landmark, Marriott’s first property on the island, and Amyth of Nicosia, a bijou boutique offering housed in a historic villa. So have dozens of easy-on-the-pocket culinary venues and hip nightlife haunts. There’s never been a better time to visit this energetic city.
Just a few feet wide in some places, but six miles across in others, the buffer zone is the obvious starting point for any tour of Nicosia. “After the Turkish invasion in 1974, Cyprus was divided in two. We didn’t have access to the northern half of the country until the first checkpoint opened near the historic Ledra Palace in 2003,” city guide Nemo explained, as he pointed out bullet holes in the façade of what was once the city’s most glamorous hotel.
Graffiti is everywhere around the crossing point. Christos Kakoulis’s (aka CRS) powerful depiction of a girl and a boy uniting the two sides with a kiss, and the message “Your Wall Cannot Divide Us”, stencilled nearby, are potent reminders of the city’s open wound, while larger murals are often used to disguise the battered urban landscapes.
We passed what was once Nicosia’s main shopping street, now an eerie wasteland guarded by a ruined watchtower topped with the flags of the opposing countries. Peering through barbed wire I saw pots, pans and furniture that were abandoned when inhabitants fled. Nemo told me that many people, who lost everything they owned during the invasion, lived in tents and temporary accommodation for years afterwards.
Slotting neatly into the gaps between devastated buildings, so-called “green line cafes”, with their packed tables and radios blaring traditional music, are part of the city’s renaissance, and a symbol of resistance. “For us Cypriots, coffee – and where we choose to drink it – is a lifestyle choice. By populating this once abandoned area with cafes we are saying ‘Den ksexno’ – don’t forget,” one café owner said, quoting the popular slogan coined to encapsulate the tragic events of 1974.
From fair-trade coffee in the Home for Cooperation Café (+357 22 44 57 40) to live music in the Mousiko Kafenion (+357 22 660123), even in the early afternoon the area buzzed with life. “It’s our version of fiddling while Rome burns,” Nemo joked.
Heading deeper into the warren of narrow alleys we spent an absorbing hour in the Laiki Geitonia district, where craft shops, Indy boutiques and art galleries – including artist’s collective Phaneromenis 70 (+357 22 663320), which was created to support and showcase Cypriot artists, reside in a heady hotchpotch of repurposed Byzantine and Venetian buildings.
With a cluster of hip new restaurants like Sentio (+357 22 232324) and Ethimo (+357 22 494449), there’s plenty of choice when it comes to fine dining, but I was keen to try the local street food. On Nemo’s advice, that evening I headed for Estiatorio Tis Erouvallas (+357 22 665346), a popular student hangout tucked into one of the city’s covered arcades, or stoas. Sat at a wobbly wooden table I ordered half a dozen meze snacks – hummus swimming in olive oil, slices of grilled halloumi, chunks of wine-marinated Cypriot sausage – along with a carafe of local wine, and still had change from €20.
Over the next few days I discovered other sights. In hot spring sunshine, I climbed Shacolas Tower (+357 22 674139), a 1960s high-rise repurposed to house a museum showcasing Nicosia before the divide, along with an 11th-floor observatory with panoramic views over the mosques and churches of this bipolar city to the Pentadaktylos Mountains beyond. I popped into the Cyprus Postal Museum (+357 22 304711), with its quirky collection of stamps and other items tracing the history of the island’s service from the 15th century onwards. I also spent several absorbing hours browsing the personal collection of Rita and Costas Severis at the CVAR (+357 22 300994).
“I started collecting everything to do with Cyprus: paintings, antiques, costumes and other memorabilia,” Rita Severis told me. “Everything was kept in our house at first – we had things everywhere. Costas would say to me: ‘I can’t find my suits!’ I needed the wardrobe for the collection, so I’d moved his suits to the bottom drawer.”
On my final afternoon I crossed over into northern Cyprus beneath a large red banner reading “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus FOREVER”. If southern Nicosia seems determined to look to the future, northern Nicosia, known to Turkish Cypriots as Lefkosa, with its shuttered tavernas, potholed streets and souvenir shops full of tat, is firmly stuck in the past. “In Lefkosa, only the Russians have any money,” I heard someone mutter in the queue for the checkpoint.
Back in southern Nicosia, as the sun descended over the razor wire, I followed students to Haratzi (+357 99538070), a vintage-themed green line café, founded in 1933, complete with pinball machines and walls lined with old posters. There are some 35,000 students studying at half a dozen universities in southern Nicosia, a city with around 256,000 inhabitants. Inevitably they’ve contributed to the city’s rebirth.
Later, in cosy snug The Lost & Found Drinkery (+357 22319230), I ordered a brandy sour, the cocktail invented in Cyprus in the 1930s for Egypt’s King Farouk, and chatted with design student Helena from Vienna. “Nicosia is like Athens and Istanbul rolled into one,” she said as we sipped our drinks. “It reminds me of Tel Aviv, too – only a lot less expensive,” she laughed.
How to do it
Fly from London Gatwick to Larnaca (fares from £26 with Wizzair). Intercity buses run regularly from the airport to city centre (tickets cost £3.50).
Double rooms at Amyth cost from £290 per night, including breakfast. For a budget option, double rooms at Gate Twenty Two hotel cost from £97 per night, including breakfast.
Get Your Guide has half-day Last Divided City Tours that cover the buffer zone and northern Nicosia, or full-day tours to Famagusta and the ghost town of Varosha in northern Cyprus with excellent guide Chemal, from €79.
Click here to read the article in Telegraph.