Sitting at the crossroads of former empires, Cyprus is more than its food and beaches

I’m not usually one for large breakfasts: a flat white with a croissant or toast is typically enough to start the day. But when a full day of hiking lies ahead, through olive groves, mountain forests, traces of Ottoman history, and valleys overlooking the Mediterranean, it doesn’t take much to convince me otherwise.

To top it off, co-owner Tolga Tumer who kept returning with more dishes, told us that our beautiful, textured accommodation in the ancient, old town of Famagusta had been renovated by his architect wife, who that morning was lecturing at the local university.

Textures, memories, food and faith

If you enjoy onomatopoeia, ‘Famagusta’ sounds like it was born to be built around good food.

For an architectural equivalent of Tumer’s carefully constructed breakfast, we found inspiration in the Islamic make-over of the imposing, honey-coloured 14th-century Gothic St Nicholas cathedral.

Looming over a shop doing a brisk trade ice-creams, this large historical building in Cyprus was turned by Ottoman Turks into the Lala Mustafa Pasha mosque in 1571 (they added a minaret and removed or concealed all images of the human form in stone, fresco or glass).

The cathedral-cum-mosque was constructed in the late 12th and early 13th centuries during the reign of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, a French dynasty that ruled the island at the time.

Famagusta has a deep and textured history running between the olives and blue Mediterranean that speaks to much of our knowledge of the world in the centuries since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It also sets the tone for any visit to Cyprus.

Here, you as the traveller understand where you are, and how everything, from the Crusades to a Greek dictatorship attempting a coup and finally a Turkish invasion, fits on this richly textured, deeply spiritual eastern Mediterranean island.

Landing in Larnaca

Franz Bauernhofer was waiting for us at Larnaca airport, on the Greek-speaking side of the island. An Austrian who fell in love with a Turkish-speaking Cypriot architect, Nelin, while studying in Vienna, Bauernhofer has fully embraced the culture and rhythms of Cyprus.

Today, the couple lives in the northern, Turkish-speaking part of Nicosia. Nelin focuses on guiding visitors through the city, while Franz, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the island’s history and natural landscape is unmistakable, leads relaxed walking tours across Cyprus’s olive-strewn terrain, transporting guests between hiking areas by car.

After our introduction, he ushered us into his van and we set off, pausing for a Greek salad in Larnaka’s old Turkish quarter before crossing the border into Northern Cyprus, a territory recognised only by Turkey.

Prior to 2003, this crossing would not have been possible, as tensions between the Greek- and Turkish-speaking authorities remained high. On the way to Famagusta, we passed a beach and a large, modern hotel; Franz waited benevolently over a Turkish coffee on a broad patio while we sank into our first embrace with Cypriot waters.

Getting a grip on Varosha 

Getting a grip on Cyprus’s compelling story begins in the ghost town of Varosha, just outside Famagusta. It may be, as happened with me, unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

Cyprus has long been a crossroads of empires, once home to the Phoenicians, and later ruled by the Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman empires. The British, during their colonial administration, left behind what Franz describes as the most functional infrastructure of any island in the region. He adds, almost in passing, that Richard the Lionheart stopped here after the Crusaders were driven out of Jerusalem by Saladin. But walking around Varosha today puts that seminal history back in one’s mental archives. The place seems frozen in time.

In the early seventies, Varosha was the crown jewel of Cyprus’s tourism industry. Franz speaks of 10,000 beds in “ritzy, high-rise hotels”, with the town nicknamed “the California of the Mediterranean”. That was until the Turkish invasion in 1974, when its Greek residents and tourists fled with the proverbial clothes on their backs.

The furniture of the inhabitants forced to flee is still visible in beachfront apartments. Neon signs offering taxi services and Kodak photo development hang from ageing facades.

A 10-story tower crane rusts above the time capsule below, and the walls of bars and restaurants are marred with bullet holes.

The “preserved” destruction speaks to the time in 1974 when the Greek dictatorship tried to annex Cyprus, and Turkey invaded to protect its minority population, in the process occupying the northern third of the island.

Greek Cypriots were displaced to the south, and Turkish Cypriots to the north and the island was divided in two. The United Nations arrived with a peace-keeping force and a green line runs through the island, including Nicosia, today the only remaining divided capital in the world.

North Cyprus is recognised by no one but Turkey, which also supports it economically. Yet, when the border crossing was opened, it could be said that life began to “normalise”.

The Coffee Club

This normalised Cyprus I found at the Coffee Club, in probably Nicosia’s most beautiful building, the ancient Büyük Han, an architectural delight maybe 100 metres from the “green line” that runs through the country.

The club started soon after April 2003, when – after a nearly 30-year ban on crossings – the Turkish Cypriot administration allowed Greek Cypriots to cross into the northern part of the island, just outside the walls of old Nicosia.

Andreas Paralikis, a Cypriot Greek and co-founder of the club, says people poured across the border in both directions, some to find old school friends and others to visit what had been their homes. For 30 years this hadn’t been possible. Hasan Cirakli, his Turk-Cypriot schoolmate and co-founder, smiles in agreement.

The Coffee Club started then, in Nicosia’s old northern side, where old friends, Greek and Turkish-speaking Cypriots, diplomats and curious expats have now been gathering every Saturday morning since 2003.

Walking to Kormakitis

In Muslim Northern Cyprus, the Christian Maronite village of Kormakitis is the last place where Sanna (Cypriot Maronite Arabic) is still spoken, alongside Greek and Turkish.

We hiked up to the village from the beach down at Cape Kormakitis, where we’d spent some time alone. It was midday in June, and the heat pressed down in humid waves, hovering in the mid to high 30s as we climbed into the island’s broad hill range.

The cobblestone village is a step into another time-warp. Opposite the local church, 79 year-old Annette Mahorani runs the café-bar that serves as the social hub of the small village. Mahorani relates the story of where she was in 1974 when the Turkish forces arrived.

Outside, on the veranda, some play cards, others fiddle with their worry beads; one plays Greek music from his phone. A few dogs hang around, plastered to the floor by the heat, yet alert to the presence of cats and the opportunity presented by the occasional car that inches its way past.

At the impressive church opposite Yorgos restaurant, where Maria Skollou has been preparing “the best kleftiko for 38 years” (overseen by her mother, the only female butcher in wider Kormakitis), a memorial service is being held for the relatives of Mahorani’s friend and fellow resident Nina Katsioloudi. I’m invited; “if you’re Franz’s friend, you are welcome!”.

At the door on the way out, congregants are given a chunk of sesame-seed-crusted fresh bread, with a hint of aniseed and a paper cup of red wine. Katsioloudi invites me to join them across the cobblestones at Mahorani’s place, to share in the post-service breakfast. It consists of a variety of options, including elements of the UN food parcels that arrive every two weeks.

The cool trees of the Troodos Mountains

We pass through Northern Cyprus’s historic villages and towns over the next few days, walking chunks of the trail, which Franz and his like-minded Cypriot walking friends have marked with painted stones.

Names like Kyrenia, Koruçam and Pedoulas trip off our tongues, as do the beaches where we swam at the end of a morning’s hike.

At a boutique hotel we stay at near Kyrenia, a couple from Yorkshire, England, tell us they’ve been visiting this particular family-run establishment for 20 years, adding: “You have to come when the orchids are out.”

It’s hard to choose a favourite part of this island, but in the intense heat of June, the breezes in the forests of the Troodos range to the south, back across the frontier, were a cool and welcome balm. Yet to be fair those winding mountain roads offered more than relief.

It was the villages, the architecture, the monasteries with frescoes dating back more than a thousand years and the view from high above, where birdlife thrives and the forest, now a national treasure, remains one of the few areas that managed to gain protected status during the British colonial period.

Cyprus is about so much more than beaches.

As with the Five Fingers mountains in the north, and the villages, castles and olive groves down below, when visited in the right months it’s a compelling adventure, from biblical times through to the shopping in northern Nicosia. DM