Episkopi, the village below Kourion

Episkopi is the village at your feet when you visit Kourion, and hardly anyone stops in it. Yet its story completes the site’s, because this is where life in the area carried on once the ancient city stopped being the centre. Here’s what it has and when I’d call in.

At the foot of Kourion

The Limassol tourist board puts Episkopi about 14 km west of the town and 40 km from Paphos, linked to both by the motorway. It sits on the lower slopes of ancient Kourion, about 60 m up, by the west bank of the Kouris river, with a fertile plain to the south and views over Kourion bay. In 2021 it had 4,098 residents, according to CYSTAT’s census, and since 1 July 2024 it has been part of Kourio municipality.

The board adds a detail that matters for visitors. Much of the village’s land falls within the Akrotiri-Episkopi base, part of the British Sovereign Base Areas. A different administration runs it, and military sites mustn’t be photographed.

The see that inherited Kourion

Finds turn up across almost the whole area, and the board explains that in antiquity Episkopi was tied to the city of Kourion. In the first centuries AD it replaced it as the centre of the region and a seat of bishops. The see moved away in the Frankish period, after 1222, when the island’s Orthodox sees were cut from 14 to 4.

Then came the feudal lords. In the 13th century it belonged to John of Ibelin, Count of Jaffa, and in the 14th and 15th centuries it was known as La Piscopia dei Cornari, because King Peter I had given it to the Cornaro family, the same family that produced Catherine, Cyprus’s last queen.

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A village whose people changed

The board recalls that Episkopi was a village of mixed population. In 1881 it had 830 residents and was the second largest in the district; by 1960 it was close to 2,000. After 1964 its Turkish Cypriot population grew, and in January 1975 those residents moved to the north. Displaced Greek Cypriots then settled in self-build housing estates, and by 1982 the village had 2,539 people. The wider background to those years is in why Cyprus is divided.

Today it’s a large village with services, schools, sports grounds and, according to the board, a four-star hotel. It lives from farming, with vines, citrus and vegetables, from substantial livestock rearing and from jobs linked to the base and to tourism.

Kourion’s local museum

For visitors, the most interesting thing is the Local Archaeological Museum of Kourion. The board explains that it’s in a traditional house that was once the home of George McFadden, an assistant director at the University of Pennsylvania who led major excavations at Kourion and around it between 1934 and 1953. The museum keeps and displays the finds from his work.

I have to flag something here. No official source I can cite tells me whether the museum is open, or its hours. Before you go, ask at the Limassol tourist office.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Limassol and choose by the reviews.

Episkopi bay

Below the village opens Episkopi bay. The board speaks of an unspoilt coastline, now protected as a national park, around Tripiti and Zapalo, and of Kourion beach, sand and pebbles beneath the cliffs. The main photo shows it from Kourion, with the long beach and white cliffs in the distance. I compare the area’s beaches in Limassol beaches, and about 3.5 km from the village is the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates.

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Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Limassol before prices climb.