Friday 16th November 2018 - Touring to the west

Today we were obliged to get up early, as we had to be in a coach by 9am for our trip to the north west of Cyprus to a place of which I had never heard, called Güzelyurt. I found the waking up very difficult as I had slept very badly, owing to the pain in my back and hip. Consequently, I took paracetamol with my breakfast along with a Valium to relax the muscle spasms in my back. I also wore my back brace, and soon had to make use of the TENS machine as the muscle spasms became very painful.

The journey took about an hour, and as Güzelyurt is known as the fruit basket of Cyprus, we soon passed acres of citrus and walnut trees.

Our first visit was to the monastery and church of Agios Mamas.

The church is not as old as the other places we are to visit today, being 18th century, but it commemorates a 12th century saint called Saint Mamas. Legend has it that the saint refused to pay his taxes to the Byzantine government so soldiers came to take him away for punishment. On the way, they met a lion chasing a lamb, and the saint saved the lamb, putting it on his shoulders, and then rode the lion into the capitol. The Byzantine authorities were so impressed that they let him off and he didn’t have to pay his taxes. Now, charmingly, he is regarded as the patron saint of tax avoiders!

The church contains the tomb of the saint, which I photographed, though it doesn’t seem to feature either the lion or the lamb, or the tax avoidance, for that matter!

What it does feature (and I didn’t manage to fit it into my photo, unfortunately) is a hole in the stone of the tomb containing holy oil. This is supposed to cure any problems you have, so, having, as I said, an extremely severe back and hip problem today, I decided to try this. I suppose I probably didn’t pray hard enough though, because nothing worked until about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, so I had a pretty difficult day.

The interior of the church is glittering with numbers of stunning icons, many a great deal older than the church itself.

This photo just gives an overall impression, we didn’t really spend long enough to pay close attention to all of them. 

Next, we went into the Güzelyurt Museum, which houses many objects found in the archeological digs in the surrounding area. It begins with objects from the Neolithic era, and there is also a great deal of pottery from the Bronze Age, as well as the later Hellenistic Age.

This one was not labelled, but I take it to be late Bronze Age,

One of the later, and more important, items is this gold diadem known as ‘the leaves of Soli’ because it was found in a tomb in Soli.

I’m afraid it isn’t a good photo as the glass case is in the centre of the room so it isn’t possible to photograph it without getting lots of unwanted stuff in the background.

The statue of Artemis of Ephesus is regarded as the most important artefact in the Museum.

Anyone who has visited Ephesus will recognise this instantly! It was found in the sea near Salamis (which we will be visiting next week) and is much later, dating to the second century AD.

We made a quick stop for morning coffee near the town of Lefke, which used to be an important area for copper mining in the past. The café where we stopped was beside a derelict pier previously used for loading the ore, and had a huge photo on the wall outside taken inside one of the mines.

Our guide explained that there is no more copper mining in the area because the mines are now in ‘no man’s land’, the border area between Greek and Turkish Cyprus. He said the people now were engaged in agriculture and tourism instead, though it seems to me that either of those would be a difficult transition for a miner to make. Perhaps the miners went elsewhere - or perhaps some of them preferred to be farmers or waiters.

Our next visit was to Soli, an ancient Greek city which dates back to about the 6th century BC. What remains today is mainly from the Roman period, most notably the mosaic floor of the basilica with its wealth of birds, animals and geometric designs and a picture of a swan.

The basilica dates from the 4th century AD, but was probably built on the site of at least one much smaller church or chapel, since it is associated with the baptism of St Auxibius, the first bishop of Soli, by St Mark the Evangelist in AD 57. This was a period in which Christians were persecuted and churches were often secret and services held in houses, so it was not until the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD that churches and basilica could be openly built. 

The basilica was rebuilt in the 6th century AD, and many of the mosaics were covered up as they were not fashionable at that later time. The basilica is extensive, so it is difficult to do it justice in a photograph.

Further up the hillside there is a Roman theatre, built on the site of the original Greek theatre. It has been restored so much that it no longer has any atmosphere of either of the original ages, but it has been in use until quite recently.

Our guide invited us to declaim something from there he was standing on that thing that looks like a grid, but nobody had anything to declaim. That’s Paul on the right of the photo in the white cap, trying to remember the first lines of The Aeneid so he could declaim them, but he failed to remember them until later in the day!

The gold diadem known as ‘the leaves of Soli’ was found in a tomb near this theatre. 

After these visits, it was time for lunch, which we ate in a seaside café with a lovely view.

Then we went off for the last visit of the day, to the Palace of Vouni, which is reasonably nearby. It is on a hill in a commanding position 250 metres above sea level, and the winding road up to it was only the width of the bus! We drove up very slowly indeed, appreciating the wonderful views but with our hearts in our mouths at the steepness of the slopes over which either the front or the back of the coach seemed to be forever hanging, and fervently hoping there wouldn’t be another equally enormous coach coming down.

The Vouni Palace was built, either by the Persian or by Persian sympathisers in about 500 BC, apparently to spy on the Greek city of Soli nearby. Vouni was destroyed in 380 BC and has not been used since. 

The highest structure was the temple of Athena, with the Palace slightly below and lower down the houses of ordinary people. The site is extensive but you need a lot of imagination to visualise what it might have looked like as there is so little left.

I never did find out what that strangely shaped stone was meant to be, and there was no information anywhere. There were some signs, saying things like ‘store rooms’ and ‘kitchen court’ but there was no indication of how the archaeologists had arrived at those designations. The view were superb though!

By this end of the day my back and hip were a lot better (thanks to St Mamas perhaps?) but it was soon time to get back into the coach and head back to Kyrenia. Tomorrow, we will be visiting Nicosia.