Lempa, the rebuilt prehistoric village near Paphos

Lempa is one of those places that show just how old the Paphos area is. A small village among vegetable plots and, beside it, a settlement of round houses built more than five millennia ago. Here’s what you’ll find and how to reach it. The surrounding area is in Paphos district.

The village

The Pafos tourism board describes Lempa as a village 80 m up, among fertile fields of vegetables and banana groves, with views of the Mediterranean and a few kilometres from Paphos. In the 2021 census it had 453 residents. It’s considered one of the oldest villages on the island, as it’s thought to have been settled in the Chalcolithic, long before the Greek and Roman cities on the coast.

Today it’s also the Cultural Village of Cyprus, with facilities to host artists and students and residency programmes meant to take the village’s art beyond the island.

The Chalcolithic settlement

Excavations by the University of Edinburgh’s School of Archaeology uncovered an important Chalcolithic settlement dated from 3900 to 2500 BC; another page from the same board puts it around 3500 BC. Today you can see the foundations of several houses and replicas of five round dwellings, built with the same materials and techniques as back then, which gives a far better sense of scale than foundations alone ever could. The settlement is part of the Aphrodite Cultural Route.

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The Lady of Lemba

The excavations also found several cross-shaped female figurines carved in stone. The best known is the Lady of Lemba, which the tourism board links with fertility, nature and the origins of the goddess tradition on the island, the same cult that centuries later had its great sanctuary at Palaepaphos.

To understand the period, the Paphos Archaeological Museum has a Chalcolithic room with finds from Lempa-Lakkoi, Kissonerga and Souskiou, including picrolite cruciform figurines.

Getting there

Pafos Buses route 607 leaves Karavela station and runs to Peyia via Chlorakas, Lempa and Kissonerga, with six departures on weekdays and four on Saturdays; some start and end at Akoursos. I haven’t found official visiting hours for the settlement, so it’s worth asking in the village. In the hills behind, about 5 km as the crow flies, lie Tala and Agios Neophytos monastery, built around a hermit’s cave. The village church, Agios Stefanos, was rebuilt on the foundations of a smaller one and consecrated in October 2012; its feasts fall on 27 December and 2 August. Coming by bus, the 607 also continues past Lempa to Kissonerga and Peyia, so you can carry on along the coast afterwards. To sleep nearby, look at Paphos.

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

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