North Cyprus Properties

From humble beginnings the city of North Cyprus Famagusta grew to be one of the wealthiest trading ports in the Mediterranean, its inhabitants so rich that legend says they ground up diamonds to season their food! The inhabitants built churches and palaces and a magnificent cathedral, safely contained within massive walls that surrounded the city.

It was in 1571 that the Ottomans invaded and laid siege to old Famagusta. They bombarded it with cannon fire for months, but the strong walls and defensive towers (bastions) kept the invading army out. Eventually the citizens of Famagusta had to surrender or starve to death. The city fell into decline, but a major restoration project began in 1996, and now the old walled city is thriving again.

Evidence of the Ottoman bombardment is everywhere in the old city, where churches lie in ruins and cannon balls litter the ground. However, many of the old buildings have been put to modern uses, and the central square is alive with activity around the mosque that now occupies the former cathedral building.

Modern North Cyprus Famagusta spreads out far wider than the old walled city, a bustling town based around the same deep Harbour that attracted the original settlers of the town here thousands of years ago. Before the events of 1974, Famagusta was a thriving report town attracting the rich and famous to its beaches and resort hotels, which were mainly based south of the city itself. Now those former hotels lie in the UN buffer zone, and the development has moved north of the city.

You can wander amongst the old buildings of the walled town and look down on the modern port from the famous Othello's Tower. There are lovely little Northern Cyprus cafés and bars tucked amongst the old buildings.

The most famous part of the walls surrounding the city of Famagusta is the Citadel, commonly referred to as Othello's Castle. In the Shakespeare play, Othello, the Moor was a Venetian commander, sent by his masters to Cyprus, where "The fortitude of the place is well known to you." From Act II onwards, the play is simply set in 'A seaport in Cyprus' and also in 'A hall in the castle'.

Othello's Tower is not so much as tower as a castle in its own right, within the fortress walls of the city of Northern Cyprus Famagusta. This Famagusta Citadel was originally built by the Lusignans to defend both town and Harbour, and today it dominates the modern-day port as it has for hundreds of years. The Harbour could be closed by a chain, one end of which was hung from the chain tower just opposite the Citadel. The stones on the promontory you can see today mark the original position of this chain tower.

The Citadel also guards the Sea Gate, one of only two original gates in the walls, built by the Venetians in 1496. Before the events of 1974, cruise ships would stop at the port of Famagusta, and the first sight greeting visitors was the impressive Citadel or Othello's Tower. Nowadays such a spectacular view is reserved for the container ships in the modern day port.

Bafra Public Beach is easy to reach via a good road, and the beach is currently as quiet as the remains of a half-built holiday village here. There is also a small but good Northern Cyprus restaurant open during the summer months. However, the peace and quiet may not last too long, as two major North Cyprus hotels are being built here.

The Artemis Hotel is a new large hotel complex with over 700 rooms in Northern Cyprus and is a reconstruction of the Artemis Temple at Ephesus.

The monastery of St Barnabas was founded on the site of the apostle Barnabas, and is a reminder of the important role Cyprus played in the history of Christianity in the Mediterranean.

The monastery was established on the site of the Saints' tomb in the fifth century, with funds provided by the Byzantine emperor. However, the church was destroyed by Arab raiders in the seventh century, but it was rebuilt. The present church and cloisters at the monastery of St Barnabas date from 1756, and parts of the building reuse columns from the ancient site at Salamis.

The site of ancient Salamis was first excavated in 1882, but after the main excavations stopped in 1974, much of the site still remains to be uncovered from the sand dunes that have spread across the deserted city.

The mains features of Salamis’s ruins are spread over a wide area. The gymnasium complex was a school and modern-style wellbeing centre rolled into one. It is marked by elegant porticoes, which still have their Byzantine mosaic pavements but the marble statues have all lost their heads. The western colonnade was reassembled in the 1950s after earthquake damage, but the mismatch of columns dates from the Byzantine period. The Byzantines didn't care much if columns matched or not, so they just raided spare ones as replacements!