Kato Drys, the village of the lower oak

Kato Drys is the perfect stop after Lefkara. It’s a short walk away, much quieter, and it has two small museums that tell the village’s story with real affection, one of them devoted to something as specific as bees.

Where it is

Kato Drys sits among the hills about 1.7 km from Lefkara and about 3.4 km from Vavla as the crow flies. With 114 people in 2021, it’s tiny even by the standards of these hills, and the two museums are what give it weight on a visit. Its name, according to the tourist board, means «lower oak». In the header photo you can see its red roofs spread across fields and low hills.

The bee and lace museum

The local tourist board presents it as a museum devoted to old village life and traditional crafts. It occupies a four-room complex in a 300-year-old house and gathers more than 1,000 exhibits, with tools, furniture and everything to do with bees and local beekeeping. In a second, neoclassical house built in 1937, there’s a rich collection of lefkaritika lace and embroidery from 1880, plus souvenirs the owner’s grandfather brought back from his trips to the UK to sell lace, including items from the coronations of King George and Queen Elizabeth.

You can take a guided tour, watch bread, dried figs, wine and zivania being made, join seasonal harvests and buy products made from honey, olives, wine and carob. It opens Wednesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 15:00, and costs €2, €1 for students.

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

The rural museum

The Kato Drys Rural Museum was the home of Gabriel and Eleni Papachristoforou, who left it to the Department of Antiquities on condition that it became a museum of old village life. It’s a 19th-century stone house with five rooms downstairs, one upstairs, an enclosed yard with a clay oven and an arched passage to the road. It opens Tuesday to Friday and Sunday, 9:00 to 15:00, and costs €1, free for students.

Wine and legends

The board mentions the Ktima Christoudia winery in Kato Drys, which shows visitors its premises and cellar and offers tastings of its wines, mostly from Cypriot grapes. It shares the wine trail and the honey village brand with its neighbours with Vavla and Odou. It also carries the EDEN label for sustainable tourism, and one of the legends the board has put on film, «The Myth of the Medieval Queen», takes place in its streets.

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

A hill morning

Lefkara, Kato Drys and Vavla fit comfortably into one morning, and Kato Drys is where I’d stop to eat, since it’s calmer than its famous neighbour. The lace itself gets its own page, Lefkara lace.

A car frees you from timetables: search car hire in Larnaca on DiscoverCars and compare companies.

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