Before leaving our hotel in Karpaz, I breezed through our copy of Lonely Planet and noticed that there appeared to be more ruins quite close to our hotel. We weren’t entirely sure that we got on the right road, which was not signposted and barely paved, but the guidebook said the ruins were 7 km east of Ay. Philon and I told the husband if we drove 15 km and still hadn’t found it, we’d turn around and go home.
It was a lovely sea view drive, and many of the locals (presumably mainland Turks) had pulled off the road and were fishing on the rocky shoals. There were some fields with sheep tightly clustered around a lone tree or water tank. Ruins of simple stone buildings dotted the side of the road. There are many such buildings throughout Karpaz, and I suspect they were meant to store grain. Though these are in disrepair, we drove past others closer to populated areas that were filled to their ceilings with freshly ground wheat. To me, this is where Cyprus oozes its charm, and if the powers that be spent more time working on agrotourism and less on developing all-inclusive monstrosities on the coastline, Cyprus could really offer something unique in terms of tourism, year-round.
Eventually it became obvious we had found what we were looking for, so we ditched the car and both ran to explore our respective corners of the place:
There were ruins of three distinct churches, plus lots of stone walls and other features. Lonely Planet had mentioned there was a necropolis, but we couldn’t find anything to that effect and there was no signage whatsoever, except for directional arrows marking the paths of UNDP-funded walking routes. The site was overgrown with thorny bushes and within minutes of getting out of the car my clothes were soaked with sweat, so we limited ourselves to the main sights. From the guidebook, we knew one of the churches was quite old and the others less so (though age is relative, because the “newer” churches were from the middle ages). We weren’t sure which was which, and there is surprisingly little about the place on the internet.
The facade of this church was very interesting, I haven’t seen many like it, with a squared-off stepped front and barrel vault behind it. There was an interesting little side area (to the right of the photo below), I couldn’t figure out what the purpose was.
Inside view– the roof was spectacularly intact. Clearly the church still received visitors as the front was littered with tea lights that had been burned out.
The side of the church facing the ocean had these clumps of moss-like vegetation on it, which was a pretty cool effect:
Inside the second church, very overgrown:
The aisle of the second church– I beat my way through the thorn bushes only to realize that the floor I was standing in was probably years’ worth of compacted sheep-shit, which had covered the floors like concrete. What if there are mosaics under there?
It would definitely be worth returning to Karpaz for a hike in the springtime. Even with summer in full swing, you could tell Karpaz had much more abundant flora and fauna than the dusty and dry Mesaoria Plain, where Nicosia is located.
