Kyrenia Castle and the ancient Greek shipwreck inside

Kyrenia Castle (Keryneia in Greek, Girne in Turkish) closes off the town’s old harbour on the north coast of Cyprus. The town has no checkpoint of its own on the Green Line, so you go through one of Nicosia’s, and the paperwork is in crossing to Northern Cyprus, while what changes over there is in Northern Cyprus. The town itself has its own guide, Kyrenia.

A castle to guard the harbour

For Encyclopaedia Britannica, the island’s most notable military architecture lies in four castles, Kyrenia, St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara, and in the Venetian walls of Nicosia and Famagusta. Kyrenia’s is the only one of the four right on the sea, tight against the harbour it defended.

English Wikipedia, the fullest account of its phases I’ve found, describes it as a 16th-century Venetian fortress built over a Crusader one, with a Byzantine chapel inside and the tomb of an Ottoman admiral, Sadik Pasha. Lacking an official source for those dates, I’m passing them on with that caveat.

The ship that sank around 295 BC

The ship is what really makes me want to cross. The Institute of Nautical Archaeology tells how Andreas Cariolou, a Kyrenia councillor, found it in 1965 while diving for sponges less than a mile offshore. He spotted a mound of about 80 amphoras and in 1967 guided Michael and Susan Katzev to the spot.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum excavated it over the summers of 1968 and 1969. It was a Greek merchant ship carrying up to 500 amphoras of ten types, mostly from Rhodes and dating from the late 4th century BC, along with tableware, tools and rigging. Its ballast was 27 millstones, and the hull was sheathed in lead against marine borers. Much of the hull survived, and it was raised, conserved between 1969 and 1974 and rebuilt at 14 m long and 4.2 m in the beam.

That hull is displayed in a hall of the castle. The bicommunal heritage committee, backed by UNDP and the EU, reckons about 75% of it is well preserved, and adds a detail I love, the route of the last voyage. The archaeological evidence suggests the ship was sailing south along the Anatolian coast and had called at Samos, Kos and Rhodes before heading east and sinking off Cyprus. The same committee treated the ship’s objects in 2017 and, in 2019, upgraded the outside of the gallery that houses it, with EU money.

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Is it worth crossing just for this?

I think so, if Mediterranean history is your thing. A late 4th-century BC hull in that condition strikes me as exceptional, and seeing it in the very town it sank off gives it a meaning a display case elsewhere can’t. If you’re not crossing, the alternative is in the south. The Thalassa museum in Ayia Napa has a full-size replica.

From Nicosia to the harbour

It’s about 19 km from Nicosia in a straight line. Driving is easiest, with the cover for the north that gov.uk says is sold at the Agios Dometios crossing. I have no official figures for the castle’s opening hours or entry fee. Prices are in lira, though euros are taken almost everywhere, and the FCDO asks visitors not to photograph military buildings. I’d head back to sleep in Nicosia.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Kyrenia Castle and pick one that fits your day.

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

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