Sightseeing in Cyprus

Sightseeing in Cyprus rewards anyone willing to drive twenty minutes inland. The Paphos Archaeological Park is the obvious anchor — four Roman villas whose floor mosaics of Theseus, Dionysus and Orpheus are among the best preserved in the eastern Mediterranean, plus the Tombs of the Kings cut into the rock a kilometre up the coast. Give it a morning, start early, and bring a hat: there is almost no shade on the site.

Kourion is the other set piece. The Greco-Roman theatre sits on a cliff with the sea directly below it, and the House of Eustolios next door still has its fourth-century mosaic floors under a modern roof. Sightseeing tours in Cyprus usually pair it with the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates a few minutes west and the medieval castle at Kolossi, which the Knights of St John used to run the sugar estates.

The Troodos churches are the part most visitors miss. Ten of them are UNESCO-listed, and from outside they look like barns — steep timber roofs built over the stone to shed snow. Inside, Asinou and Panagia tou Araka are covered wall to ceiling in twelfth-century Byzantine painting. Any serious sightseeing itinerary in Cyprus also takes in the walled city of Nicosia, still the last divided capital in Europe, where the Venetian ramparts and the crossing at Ledra Street sit ten minutes' walk apart.