Avgorou and its folk museum

Avgorou is the big village on the western side of the Kokkinochoria, a farming place where people still live off the land. It has no coast, but it does have a fine folk museum and a couple of old churches. Here’s what to see. Its red soil neighbours have their own guide, Kokkinochoria.

A potato village

Avgorou had 4,925 residents in the 2021 census, though the regional tourism website, Visit Famagusta, mentions about 4,300. The same website places it south-west of Famagusta and close to the Green Line, and explains that most villagers work the land, growing potatoes, vegetables and citrus, with the rest in tourism and local business. The potatoes from its red soil have a good name. Planting runs from December to February, the harvest from April into early June, and a smaller crop comes later.

The folk museum

This is the best thing in the village. To preserve its heritage, the community bought and restored the Koutras house, a stone farmhouse from 1921, one of the few rendered houses in the area, which keeps its courtyard, wheel well, stockyard and cistern. With help from the Pierides Foundation it became the Avgorou-Pierides Foundation Folk Art Museum, with carved 19th-century furniture, 18th and 19th-century textiles and embroidery, costumes, silverware, pottery, tools and nine paintings by folk artist Michael Kassialos. OSEA has a stop beside the museum. I couldn’t find its opening hours in any official source.

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Churches and monastery

On the square, the church of Agios Georgios dates, according to the region, from between the 10th and 12th centuries, with frescoes from later centuries. The parish church of Saints Peter and Paul is late 19th-century and was renovated in 1931, 1959 and 1999. On the outskirts, the 16th-century Agios Georgios Teratsiotis has a legend about a monk and a devil uprooting a carob tree.

On a hill above the road, the monastery of Agios Kendeas dates from the 15th or 16th century. Tradition says the saint, believed to be German, came to Cyprus to become a monk, stayed first in Paphos and ended up near Avgorou, in a nearby cave now regarded as holy water.

The EOKA monument and Cyherbia

In the village, the EOKA 1955 to 1959 monument, unveiled on 18 October 2002, stands where Modestos Panteli, the organisation’s first fighter to fall, died on 1 April 1955. A cypress-lined path leads to a Mycenaean-inspired tomb with 26 relief portraits, and there’s a chapel alongside.

On the outskirts, the Cyherbia botanical park is a family outing, with a large hedge maze, woodland, herb gardens, soap-making and tea-blending workshops, a restaurant and, in summer, the lavender in bloom.

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Getting there

OSEA routes 702 and 706 link Avgorou with Frenaros, Deryneia and Paralimni, route 705 with Liopetri and Ayia Napa, and route 712 with Larnaca. All charge €2 for a daytime trip. Nearby are Liopetri and Frenaros, and the region reckons on about ten minutes from the coast to these villages.

Where the bus does not go, a car does: compare car hire in Ayia Napa before you arrive rather than at the desk.

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