Chrysaliniotissa, the edge of the divided city

In Chrysaliniotissa, Nicosia’s old town comes to an abrupt end. It’s a quarter of old churches on the eastern edge of the walled city, and to the north its streets run straight into the Green Line. Here’s what to see and how I’d walk it, based on what Nicosia municipality and the Nicosia Tourism Board publish.

A quarter on the edge

The quarter sits between Famagusta Gate and the UN buffer zone, which in parts of the old town is only a few metres wide. That’s why I see it as the counterpoint to Laiki Geitonia, which is built around the visitor, whereas this is a neighbourhood of residents who spent decades living with their backs to a line of barrels. The story of that line is in the Green Line in Cyprus.

The church that gives it its name

Panagia Chrysaliniotissa is the heart of the quarter. The Nicosia Tourism Board says tradition credits its building to Helena Palaiologina in 1450, though the fabric shows Byzantine, Frankish, Venetian and Ottoman phases. It highlights the twin domes, the iconostasis with its icons and the courtyard, and lists it as open on weekdays from 8:00 to 15:00. So I’d come on a weekday morning, as I have no weekend hours to give you.

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St Kassianos, on the same line

Close by, the municipality places the church of St Kassianos, the only one in Cyprus dedicated to this 4th-century Roman saint, regarded as the founder of monasticism in western Europe. It’s modern, from 1854, with fragments of an older building set into its walls, an 18th-century iconostasis and a golden box holding the saint’s remains. It also keeps a silver helmet that tradition holds to be miraculous for headaches. His feast falls on 29 February, so it’s only celebrated in leap years.

The Tourism Board adds that the church stands on the Green Line and was caught up in the clashes of 1958 and 1963 and in what it calls the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The mosque next door

To the south, by Famagusta Gate, begins the Taht-el-kale quarter. Its mosque was built in 1826 by the Ottoman governor Es-Seyyid Mehmet Agha, with round vaults, Gothic arches and lattice windows, and the minaret was rebuilt in 1948. The Tourism Board recalls that this was a mixed neighbourhood, and the mosque and its Koran school are what remains of that.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Nicosia on GetYourGuide.

My walking route

I’d start at Famagusta Gate, head north to Chrysaliniotissa and St Kassianos and look down the ends of the streets, keeping away from UN posts and not photographing military installations, as the Spanish foreign ministry advises. It takes about an hour on foot. Then I’d head back to the centre of Nicosia through the old town.

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If you are staying the night, see the best hotel deals in Nicosia for your dates: the well-placed rooms go fast.