Kykkos Monastery, the richest in Cyprus

Kykkos is the monastery every Cypriot knows, and also the richest on the island, as the Troodos Development Company points out. It isn’t old in the way the painted churches are, because fires forced it to be rebuilt time and again, but its story is bound up with the country’s. Here it is, drawing on what the monastery itself publishes, nearly all in Greek.

An icon brought from Constantinople

According to the monastery’s old manuscripts, its founding goes back to Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who reigned from 1081 to 1118. The tale has the flavour of legend. A hermit, Isaiah, was living in the Marathasa mountains when the island’s governor, Manuel Boutoumites, got lost while hunting and stumbled upon him. The governor fell ill and recovered, the emperor’s daughter fell ill too, and in the end the icon of the Virgin that tradition attributes to St Luke travelled to Cyprus to stay.

That icon, the Virgin Kykkotissa, is the heart of the monastery. In times of raids the monks hid it in mountain caves and put a copy in its place. The faces of the Virgin and Child are still covered, and its decoration was made in 1576, five years after the Ottoman conquest. Today it hangs on the iconostasis, to the left of the central door.

A church reborn from fire

The first church was wooden, like the rest of the monastery, and fires in 1365 and 1541 destroyed its frescoes. After 1541 it was rebuilt in stone, but it burned again in 1751 and 1813. Today it’s a three-aisled basilica with a dome, its aisles dedicated to the Virgin, All Saints and the Archangels. The iconostasis dates from 1755, and some icons are by the Cretan painter Ioannis Kornaros, from the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The bell tower went up in 1882, as for much of Ottoman rule bells weren’t allowed, and the largest of its six bells, made in Russia, weighs 1,280 kilos.

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

The museum

The museum opened in May 1998 in the monastery’s old cistern, by the lower courtyard. It shows liturgical objects, icons, manuscripts, old maps, engravings and archaeological pieces. Some of them left the island in the past and the monastery bought them back at auction to bring them home. You can visit daily, between 10:00 and 17:00 in winter and until 18:00 in summer, and it has its own conservation workshop.

Kykkos in the 20th century

The monastery is proud of its role under British rule. It was one of the main funders of the EOKA struggle from 1955 to 1959, sheltered fighters inside the compound and in some fifteen hideouts nearby, and for that the British closed it to the public from June 1956. It was also home to the young Makarios, who arrived as a novice in October 1926 and went on to become archbishop and the Republic’s first president. His tomb is on the nearby summit of Throni, which I cover in Makarios’s tomb. If the man interests you, in Nicosia there’s the Archbishop’s Palace.

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

Fitting in the visit

Kykkos lies at the western end of the Troodos Mountains, on the road that climbs from Kalopanayiotis via Gerakies, in the Marathasa valley. I’d combine it with that valley’s painted churches of Troodos and allow an hour and a half for the monastery and museum, plus the detour to Throni. The monastery’s main feast is on 8 September.

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