THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408190092
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 313 lines
HIGH IN THE CLOUDLESS SKY, the sun is rapidly turning my face and arms from pink to red. The powdery dust on the rocky path has given my shoes a coating of chalk. Sweat runs in rivluets down my back. I should be lounging beside the pool back at the hotel.
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. I know that. But there's so little time. I am on the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean for only a week, and there's 9,000 years' worth of history, cultural homogination and political upheaval to take in.
So I am here in the midday sun, on the outskirts of the small city of Paphos on the west coast, at a place called the Tombs of the Kings. My guidebook tells me that there probably weren't any real kings buried in this enormous necropolis. These tombs along the rocky shoreline date ``only'' from the the 3rd or 2nd century B.C., and the last King of Paphos died well before that.
Still, these burial grounds are a magnet for scholars and tourists alike. I see several groups being addressed in professorial tones - one in Italian, another in German. Some listeners are paying attention, others are chatting among themselves. Wonder if there'll be a quiz later.
Then I hear a voice I can understand. An English voice.
``Queer race, these, don't you think,'' says one English woman to the other. Both are dressed in flower print dresses, sensible shoes and straw sun hats. ``Carving out tombs in the stone to bury their dead.''
I think to myself, not a whole lot more unusual than another race of people - her ancestors perhaps - who would haul giant bluestones 250 kilometers across difficult terrain from South Wales and set them up on end in a circle on the Salisbury Plain at a place that would come to be called Stonehenge.
Each of us travelers, I suppose, brings a different perspective to the wonders we view.
Most of Cyprus' nearly 2 million visitors a year are Europeans - about half of them from the United Kingdom - come, it would seem, more for the climate than for scholarly pursuits. They come from places with long histories of their own, after all. And here the suns shines an average of 340 days a year. Brits and Germans and Swedes and Swiss come to this island's modern seaside resorts because they like to go home bronzed.
I arrived here from Amsterdam where it was 61 degrees and drizzling; I found the temperature 90 degrees, the climate sunny and dry.
For an American, this third-largest Mediterranean island, shaped like a bass fiddle lying on its side with its neck pointed northeast toward Turkey, is slightly overwhelming. How does one grasp 90 centuries of civilization?
I'm not the first to have that feeling. A fellow who came before me, an English chap named Byron, wrote, ``History on this island is almost too profuse; it gives one a sort of mental indigestion.''
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was born in the warm sea foam along the south coast near Paphos. Homer called her ``Cyprian'' after her island birthplace. The Romans called her Venus. One of her boyfriends, Adonis, was killed by a wild boar on a peninsula near Paphos. People worshiped her. Sort of like the Marilyn Monroe of her day. If there had been supermarket tabloids back then, she'd have knocked Julia Roberts right off the covers.
There are a lot of naked statues and paintings of her still around today. Maybe you're familiar with Botticelli's Allegory of the Birth of Venus - I call it Venus on the halfshell - at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, or the Venus de Milo that stops and silences and awes the culture-seeking hordes that stream through the Louvre in Paris.
OK, that's mythology. Well, try this: The ancient city of Kition, within present-day Larnaca, was founded by one of Noah's grandsons, Khittim. That's going WAY back. The Bronze-Age Mycenaeans brought their civilization here more than 3,000 years ago, establishing the Greek roots that dominate the island to this day.
Alexander the Great came by on his way to conquer the world. Antony gave the island to Cleopatra as a gift. Paul and Barnabas brought Christianity here; Lazarus, too, shortly after he was raised from the dead. Richard the Lion-Hearted stopped on his crusade to Jerusalem long enough to marry Berengaria of Navarre at Limassol. In 1191 that was the international wedding of the year.
The island's position at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa was such that it was invaded and ruled by whatever gang happened to be controlling the neighborhood at the time - Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Franks, Byzantines, Venetians among them. Each left an imprint: Greek temples, Roman theatres, Christian basilicas, Byzantine churches, impressive monasteries. And as a result, this ``queer race'' of Cypriots is really an enriched mix of many different races, cultures and creeds.
And partly because the Cypriots have been welcoming visitors - or receiving visitors at any rate - for centuries, they've become a particularly hospitable people.
A visit to Cyprus should really begin at Nicosia at the Cyprus Museum. A guided tour of more than an hour spent examining the extensive collection of art and artifacts dating from the Neolithic Period (about 7,000 B.C.) through the Roman period (about 300 A.D.), arranged chronologically, gave me an overview of the island's rich cultural heritage.
Nicosia, a cosmopolitan city of 170,000 and Cyprus' inland capital since the 10th century, is both a fascinating and tragic place.
Fascinating for its Byzantine Museum with a superb collection of nearly 150 icons covering a period of 1,000 years, and for its ``Laiki Yitonia'' area of narrow pedestrian-only streets with shops, boutiques, cafes and markets snuggled within thick stone walls. The Venetians built the circular walls with 11 heart-shaped, symmetric bastions and three gates between 1567 and 1570 to fortify the city against a Turkish invasion.
Tragic because Nicosia is today the world's only politically divided city. A ``green-line'' barrier cuts through the very core of the city, patrolled by United Nations troops from Britain and Argentina separating the Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot sections. The Venetian walls have been made a mockery.
Crossing the line is strongly discouraged. It's not a situation that a visitor finds particularly uncomfortable, and certainly not threatening as the Berlin wall was. But you just don't go ``over there'' to the Turkish-occupied side.
How did this happen? Have you forgotten Turkey's invasion and subsequent occupation of more than a third of the island? Perhaps you're too young to remember.
To a world on fast forward, it seems like ages ago. It happened in 1974.
The background: Cyprus was under Turkish domination from 1571, when they kicked the Venetians out, until 1878 when Turkey, struggling for its own survival, agreed to sort of ``rent'' the island to Britain, which would administer it. Then Turkey chose the wrong side - that is the losing side - in World War I, and Cyprus became a British colony.
In 1960, after several years of struggle for independence, Cyprus was declared an independent republic and chose to remain within the British Commonwealth. Archbishop Makarios III became its first president. However, the new nation was saddled, by international agreement, with an peculiar constitution that precluded majority rule.
Neither the Greek-Cypriot majority nor the Turkish-Cypriot minority was happy. The government could not govern. In the summer of 1974 a military coup was followed by the Turkish invasion that resulted in the displacement of about 200,000 Greek Cypriots, who became refugees in their own country. Twenty years later, nearly 1,100 Greek Cypriots remain classified as ``missing.''
``It's an unjust world,'' one Greek Cypriot told me. ``Iraq invaded Kuwait. Because Kuwait has oil, the world came to its rescue. Cyprus has only potatoes and beaches.''
Cyprus is more than that. To be honest, the beaches are not all that grand. Not like Caribbean Islands. Only a few are sandy; most are rocky. But an abundance of hotel pools provides plenty of swimming opportunities. Most of the coastline is rocky palisades, much like the Northern California coast . .
Inland, lumpy, barren hills rise to rugged, rocky mountains covered with pines. Little whitewashed villages, time capsules where donkeys are the principal means of transportation, dot the landscape. This part of the island geographically resembles the American southwest, much like, say, northern New Mexico. In the mountains there are streams and waterfalls and, in the winter, enough snow around 6,400-foot Mount Olympus to make a short skiing season possible.
Although much of the land is semi-arid, color is everywhere. Pink and white oleander line the roads and river banks. Tall fennel plants raise their mustard-colored heads. I'm told there are 1,170 species of wild flowers on the island; 55 species and four or five varieties are endemic.
I see no potatoes - probably because they grow underground - but I do see cherry trees sagging with their loads, tomatoes, melons, apricots, olives, lemons, oranges and bee hives by the hundreds. Much of this produces is sold at little roadside stands.
Departing steamy Nicosia, I head for the Troodos Mountains, to the town of Platres. At 3,700 feet, this largest of Cyprus' mountain resorts has been a cool, breezy, pine-scented haven since it sprang up as a 19th century retreat for British troops. Later it inspired author Daphne du Maurier to bring her novel ``Rebecca'' to life. Hikers seem to love this region.
The roads are narrow and winding and there are no guard rails. But the scenery is spectacular and the traffic is light. Streams cascade down the rugged slopes. The drop-offs along the cliffs are sheer. A squad of Cypriot soldiers sits silently beside the road as their officer supervises the rigging of ropes. They are going to do rappelling training. Not a one has that ``be all you can be'' look on his face. I wouldn't want to go over that cliff either, and I drive very carefully.
The road takes me eventually to the Kykko Monastery, the most famous in Cyprus and revered throughout the Orthodox world. Founded in 1100, it houses a golden icon of the Virgin Mary, one of three supposedly painted by Saint Luke. Nearby is the hilltop tomb of Archbishop Makarios, who served as a novice at Kykko.
Equally interesting are the small mountain villages with narrow, twisting streets and flower-covered houses painted brilliant white and topped with red-brown tiles. Everyday life here goes on quietly and peacefully as it has for ages.
I have lunch on Omodos' large cobblestone square adjacent to a centuries-old monastery and watch black-clad old women return from a funeral. At little stands at the edge of the square, people sit in the shade waiting for customers to sample their locally made wine or their fresh cherries. I am nearly overcome by the aroma of baking bread.
On the little streets of Kedares I watch another old woman, struggling with an obstinate donkey that is loaded with cane, stop to chat with neighbors.
There's a saying here: ``Scratch the soil anywhere in Cyprus and you will find traces of its magnificent past.'' I found that to be literally true along the rocky palisade outside my hotel near Paphos.
Strolling along as I gazed across the blue Mediterranean, I realized I was kicking up pottery shards. Scores of them. I'm no expert on this subject, although I have dug up and studied hundreds of examples from the American Colonial period. But knowledgable enough to determine that these were infinitely older - bits of crockery from which people from some ancient civilization ate and drank along this shore as they too gazed out on this same sea.
It is easily understandable why this entire region around Paphos has been named to UNESCO's list of World Cultural Heritage sites.
Closer to Paphos, near the Tombs of the Kings, is a 2nd century A.D. amphitheater, as well as several excavated 3rd century villas that contain some remarkably preserved mosaic floors depicting different scenes from Greek mythology. They are considered the finest of the eastern Mediterranean. Guarding the town's harbor is the Ottoman fortress castle, and overlooking the harbor is the ruins of a seemingly impregnable Byzantine castle that was reduced to spectacular rubble by an earthquake in 1222.
It was at Paphos that Saint Paul came around 45 A.D. and converted the Roman governor to Christianity. This alarmed both Romans and Jews, and they conspired to have Paul arrested, tied to a column and lashed 39 times. The column still stands.
Larnaca's history stretches deep - to the 13th century B.C. when it was a rich seaport and major center of the copper trade - and it also is the birthplace of the stoic philosopher Zeno, but it is most strongly associated with the ``second'' life of Lazarus.
After his miraculous resurrection at Bethany, Lazarus came to this place, then called Kition, where the local population elected him their first bishop. After his second death 30 years later, he was buried here. Later his remains were transferred to Constantinople; from there they were stolen and ended up in Marseilles; eventually some of the remains were returned to Cyprus, where they lie in a crypt in a 9th century Orthodox church that bears his name.
Larnaca also figures in another more recent and most shameful story involving Cyprus' history. In 1865 General Palma Luigi de Cesnola came here as American consul. With the blessing of ruling Turkish officials he systematically and methodically looted 12 temples, 65 necropolises and more than 60,000 other tombs containing archaeological treasures. Some were sold on the open market, but the great majority found their way to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where they form the Cyprus Collection.
Today Larnaca is the site of Cyprus' principal international airport (there is another at Paphos), and some of the island's best beachfront resorts are in this area.
Limassol is Cyprus' second-largest city (135,000), its largest seaside resort, and commercial center - particularly as regards its highly regarded wine industry. Vineyards dot the hillsides for miles around.
It is the center as well for more historical treasures. To the east are the ruins of the ancient Kingdom of Amathus, to the west the ancient Kingdom of Kourion. The latter is one of the most important historic sites in the eastern Mediterranean. Archaeologists still working here regard it as second only to Pompeii because of the number of intact artifacts recovered as a result of its calamitous destruction by earthquake in the 4th century A.D.
There is a massive Greco-Roman theater built into a hillside with a panoramic view of the coast where Greek dramas, Shakespeare plays and musical concerts are held. There are more exquisite mosaics, an early Christian basilica, the ruins of the Temple of Apollo and an elongated oval stadium.
In Limassol, down near the old port, is the castle where the Richard-Berengaria nupials took place, and just outside the city at Kolossi is another castle that was important to Richard's crusader pals, serving first as Grand Commandry of the Knights Templar and later headquarters for the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.
It was here at Kolossi that the full-bodied port-type dessert wine called ``Commandaria'' - the oldest named wine in the world - is said to have originated.
Here in Cyprus, even the wines have a special history. ILLUSTRATION: STEPHEN HARRIMAN COLOR PHOTOS
Ruins of the Temple of Apollo stand amid other remnants of the
ancient Kingdom of Kourion, an important historical site.
Among the ruins near Paphos on the west coast is this mosaic floor
from a Roman house dating to the 2nd or 3rd century A.D.
A ruined Byzantine castle overlooks the harbor at Paphos. In 1222 an
earthquake reduced the castle to spectacular rubble.
In Troodos Mountain villages such as Omodos, everyday life goes on
quietly and peacefully as it has for ages.
Map
JOHN CASERTA/Staff
Graphic
TRAVELER'S ADVISORY
Climate: The sun shines an average of 340 days a year with the
bulk of the precipitation in December-February. Temperatures from
May to mid-October range from the 80s to the low 90s; in winter the
average is in the 50s. There is enough snowfall in the Troodos
Mountains for a brief ski season.
Speak to me: Greek is the native tongue, but English is widely
spoken.
Currency: One Cyprus pound costs about two U.S. dollars; for $100
you get about 50 Cyprus pounds.
Getting there: The national airline, Cyprus Airways, does not fly
to the United States. The most direct routes to Cyprus from the U.S.
are via Delta or TWA to Athens with a transfer to Cyprus Airways, or
any international flight, such as USAir, American or United, to
London, Amsterdam, Paris or Frankfurt and connecting with Cyprus
Airways.
Your papers, please: Visas are not required for U.S. citizens;
passports are necessary and must be valid for at least three months
beyond the date of entry into Cyprus.
Accommodations: The Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) classifies
and registers hotels between 5 stars and 1 star and hotel-apartments
(sort of like self-catering condos from Class A to C; detailed
information on rates is available free from CTO. I stayed at Lordos
Beach Hotel near Larnaca (4 star, $90 single, $120 double including
buffet breakfast); the Pendeli Hotel at Platres in the Troodos
Mountains (3 star, $63 single, $84 double, B&B); the Elia Latchi
Holiday Village condo in a little fishing village (Class A, $78
double); the elegant Azia Beach Hotel outside Paphos (5 star, about
$50 per person, B&B); and the Golden Bay Hotel outside Larnaca (5
star, $140 single, $180 double, B&B). The Azia was clearly my
favorite. It is located just minutes from Cyprus' only golf course.
Car hire: The motorcar came to Cyprus during Britain's rule, so
the steering wheel is on the right and you drive on the left side of
the road. There are a number of car rental agencies at both Paphos
and Laranaka airports; this is an arrangement that should be done
ahead of arrival through a travel agent, particularly if you have
special requirements such as automatic transmission or air
conditioning. Rentals start at about $25 a day; renters must be at
least 21 and have a valid driver's license.
By bus: If driving isn't your cup of tea, there are numerous
sightseeing tours operated with air conditioned motorcoaches.
Info: CTO, 13 E. 40th St., New York, N.Y. 10016; (212) 683-5280.
- Stephen Harriman
by CNB