On May 6, the Embassy’s locally employed staff association organized a trip to visit the Soli mosaics northwest of Nicosia. Our Embassy staff is a mix of Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots, and while the Turkish Cypriots frequently cross to the south to visit the Embassy, go grocery shopping, go to the mall, etc. many Greek Cypriots do not cross to the north– polls show a full one-third of Greek Cypriots have never crossed, and many others only crossed once when the checkpoints first opened a twelve years ago. As Soli is in the north, it was a big deal for many of Greek Cypriot colleagues to join us.
Soli was one of the 10 ancient kingdoms of Cyprus. I think they were Greek-ish; the mosaics looked super Roman, but they are located in a basilica. I couldn’t hear the tour guide and there’s not much on the internet about them. But the mosaics and basilica date to the 4th century, so it’s OLD.
This is the front of the basilica. Unfortunately it was difficult to capture on the camera, but there were three semi-circular walls on the front of the basilica, and I think there are more awesome mosaics up ahead. Part of the reason we chose to visit Soli was that USAID funded walkways to allow people to view the mosaics without walking in the ruins. But for whatever reason the walkways didn’t go over to this side, so I couldn’t really see what was going on…
Frankly, I’m getting a little spoiled by Cyprus and Greece and while there were neat elements to this site (like the fallen column), sometimes my reaction is a flat “Oh boy. Another pile of rocks.” I was particularly disappointed by the mosaics at Soli– they are hard to see and appreciate because they’ve built a roof over them with no lighting inside. The colors are very muted, almost dusty even. It made me think back to the spectacular mosaics at Volubulis in Morocco, which were basically out in an open field with nothing but a chain to keep people off of them. And when I saw those mosaics, it had just rained and the colors were so vibrant they could have been painted the day before. But if you live here, it’s good to get to see everything at least once…
It was a spectacular day and a fantastic view.
We enjoyed a lovely “full catastrophe meze” in the town of Limnitis/Yesilirmak, which is right along the far northwestern edge of the Green Line. (Interestingly, we saw more big UN trucks up here then we did living in a divided city.) This particular corner of Cyprus was amazing, really beautiful coastline and the food did not stop coming! Every square inch of the table was covered with dishes. Lunch was topped off with delicious fresh strawberries, which are a local specialty and a Turkish coffee. It was a lovely little town and I will definitely be back!
