Kyrenia - November 15th 2018

Today we had a short tour of Kyrenia. I say short because there aren’t many places to see, but we spent hours seeing what there was.

We began by walking through the town from our hotel, which is extremely central. We walked a short distance to the main town square, where there is a rather peculiar fountain, and then through the main shopping street down to the old harbour. None of the shops seemed to have anything we would want, though there was a wide selection of things like suitcases, shoes and scarves. One of our party commented that, as we are all ‘of a certain age’, the last thing we all need is more junk, and we heartily agreed. Since or house seems to be full of ‘stuff’ at the moment, we are concentrating on getting rid of some of it, rather than acquiring more.

The old harbour of Kyrenia used to be important for importing many goods from different parts of the world, but this is no longer so, and it is now just a sheltered harbour for what look to be mostly pleasure craft. The original Customs house is now a tourist office. At one side of the harbour is the castle, and we walked there where we had a talk from our guide about its history.

I have to admit this isn’t my photo, it’s far better than anything I took.

Although the site of Kyrenia dates back to the 10th century BC, it was apparently the Romans who developed it into a town, and the first castle appears to have been built in the 7th Century AD by the Byzantines to guard the city against an Arab maritime threat. The first historical reference to the castle occurs in 1191, when King Richard the Lionheart captured Cyprus on his way to the Third Crusade. After a short period, Richard sold the whole island to the Knights Templar. They found the island troublesome and begged Richard to take it back again, so he next transferred it to to his cousin Guy de Lusignan. This began the 300 years of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus (1192–1489). 

The first castle was probably quite small, though it was enlarged in the early 13th century. Some of the early parts remain, one being the rather horrible dungeons, where there are some nasty scenes of torture. I left quite quickly!

This is the entrance to the dungeons.

By 1489 the Venetians had taken control of Cyprus and in 1540 they enlarged the castle, giving it its present-day appearance.  The current courtyard at the centre of the castle is enormous.

The chief changes made by the Venetians, such as the addition of thick walls and places for cannons, were adaptations to the changes in warfare because of the development of artillery using gunpowder. The Venetians also installed gun ports at three levels so that they could direct cannon fire against attackers from the land. Inside the castle, they built huge long ramps so as to be able to drag the cannon up onto the walls. 

When the work on the castle was finished, its walls also encompassed the small church of St. George, which might have been built the Byzantines in the 11th or 12th century. It incorporates some roman pillars.

There are some small museums inside the castle, built into parts of the castle that were originally stables or living quarters. One of them houses replicas of a Neolithic village about 10 km to the east of Kyrenia, dating to between 4410 and 3750 BC. 

The huts were mostly of one room and mostly built partly below ground. There are also replicas of two tombs, the earlier one dating to the middle and late Bronze Age (2075 to 1725 BC) and the later one to the Hellenistic period (325 to 58BC). If you want to know how I remember all this stuff, it’s because I photograph the labels of anything I want to remember, otherwise it just becomes a jumble in my mind! There are also replicas of the vessels found in these tombs in cabinets round the walls.

Perhaps more interesting is the shipwreck museum, because that isn’t a replica, you can see the ship that appears to have been sunk around around 300 BC about a mile outside Kyrenia, presumably in a storm. This was, until very recently, the oldest known shipwreck in the world.

It really is astonishing how much of it is left, after 2300 years! The objects on display are original ones from the wreck, and show that the ship was carrying wine, almonds and other fruits, and also millstones, which doubled as ballast. 

We walked round as much as possible of the castle walls, from which there are some wonderful views. 

This is the view out to the east of Kyrenia. Below is a view to the west, showing the narrow entrance to the old harbour.

This is taken from one of the towers on the wall, and shows how sheltered the harbour is, being protected by such a long wall.

The stairs up to the walls are quite awful though, mostly very narrow, worn in the centre of the treat through centuries of tread and with risers of different sizes, sometimes of well over a foot which made them very difficult to climb. Thee are also far too many of them, since different stairs give access to different parts of the wall, and you can’t walk round the entire walls, you have to go up, look at an area and come down again and go up yet another set of steps. My legs felt very wobbly after a while, as if I’d spent the morning at the gym!

It was after 2 pm by the time we had seen everything, so we went back to the harbour for a quick lunch, and then we watched the parade to celebrate the anniversary of the day the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared its independence as a sovereign state. We watched a military band, lots of marching soldiers and schoolchildren, policemen, fire engines and ambulances.

Later, there was a display of flying by the Air Force which was extremely noisy, and which we watched from the balcony of our hotel as I was pretty tired by then.