Famous Landmarks in Nicosia
The last divided capital in Europe, still ringed by its Venetian walls.
Nicosia's historic landmarks cluster inside a single ring: the old town enclosed by walls the Republic of Venice rebuilt in 1567, shortly before the Ottoman Empire took the island. That building campaign also produced the Famagusta Gate, which still stands on today's Greek Cypriot side of the line that divides the city. North of that line, a Gothic cathedral raised in 1326 was converted into a mosque after the 1571 conquest, and the Ottomans built the Büyük Han caravanserai the following year to house merchants passing through their new territory. A medieval church, a merchant inn and a fortress wall all sit within a short walk of a modern political division.
Venetian Walls
1567
An unbroken ring of Renaissance-era ramparts still encircling the old town almost entirely intact, ranked among the best-preserved fortifications of its kind anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean.
These are the defensive walls encircling Nicosia's old town, rebuilt entirely in their present form in the mid-16th century when the Republic of Venice was preparing for war with the Ottoman Empire. They replaced an earlier medieval circuit that had stood since the Middle Ages. Well preserved today, they are counted among the best-surviving Renaissance defensive walls in the Eastern Mediterranean and remain a major attraction in the old town.
- Their design and the layout of the town inside them have been compared to two other planned Renaissance fortress towns, Palmanova in Italy and Valletta in Malta.
- The current walls replaced an entirely separate medieval circuit that was demolished to make way for them.
Photo: AncientNicosia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Selimiye Mosque
1326
A large Gothic-style church building — at 66 by 21 metres the largest and oldest of its kind still standing on the island — that continues in use today as a mosque, its scale making it the single largest historic building in the city.
Built in 1326 as the cathedral of Saint Sophia, this is the largest and oldest Gothic church to survive on the island, possibly raised over an earlier Byzantine church on the same site. It served as the coronation church of the kings of Cyprus. After the Ottoman conquest it was converted into a mosque and given its present name, and it remains the main mosque used on the island, with room for 2,500 worshippers across 1,750 square metres of prayer space.
- It may have been the largest church built anywhere in the eastern Mediterranean in the thousand years between the rise of Islam and the late Ottoman period.
Photo: Julian Nyča (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Famagusta Gate
1567
Its facade facing the town is imposingly elaborate, in sharp contrast to a plain, weathered outer doorway set into the angle of a bastion, where the old arch stones are damaged and the original doors are gone.
This is the chief gate through Nicosia's fortified walls, built in 1567 in the Venetian style and modelled directly on the Lazaretto Gate at Candia, on Crete, designed earlier in the 16th century by Michele Sanmicheli. Historically also known as the Porta Giuliana, it opens onto a vaulted passage roofed with an 11-metre dome lit by a circular oculus, in the manner of the Pantheon in Rome. Wide enough for two vehicles side by side, its facade facing the town is far more elaborate than its plain, weathered outer face.
Photo: Iakovos Hatzistavrou, European Commission (CC BY 4.0)
Büyük Han
1572
Built around an open courtyard with a small, freestanding mosque and ablution fountain at its centre, it is the largest caravanserai on the island and now houses galleries, workshops, cafes and souvenir shops instead of the travelling merchants it once sheltered.
Built by the Ottomans in 1572, a year after they took the island from the Venetians, this is the largest caravanserai in Cyprus and reckoned among the finest buildings on the island. Merchants and their pack animals once lodged around its open courtyard, at the centre of which stands a small mosque with a fountain for washing before prayer. Under British administration it became the city's first prison. Restored through most of the 1990s, it now operates as an arts centre with galleries, workshops, courtyard cafes and souvenir shops.
Photo: Dickelbers (CC BY-SA 3.0)
History
Continuously inhabited for more than five thousand years, Nicosia has been Cyprus's capital since the 10th century, and its old town still shows the marks of successive rebuilding rather than a single plan. Its largest surviving medieval structure, the Gothic cathedral of Saint Sophia, went up in 1326. When Venice took over the island's defence, it tore down the older town walls entirely and built the present, still-intact circuit in 1567, bracing for war with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans took the city in 1571 anyway: the cathedral became a mosque, and a large caravanserai went up nearby the following year. Almost four centuries later, in 1974, a Turkish invasion split the city along a line it has not crossed since.