Limassol Castle: fortress, prison and museum

From the outside, Limassol Castle is less dramatic than you might expect of a place with a royal legend. It’s a solid block of pale stone with few windows, closer to a warehouse than a fairy-tale fortress. But the story it holds is one of the longest in town, and its museum explains medieval Cyprus better than anywhere else on the south coast. Below is what’s inside and how it slots into a day in town.

A castle on top of a castle

The Limassol tourist board explains that the building went up in the 13th century over an earlier Byzantine fortification, and that its original form and exact date are still being researched. What is documented is the first official reference to the fortress, in 1228. Over the centuries it was altered and damaged by invasions and earthquakes, until the Ottomans rebuilt it in 1590 in the shape that has come down to us.

Parts of the older fortress survive inside the newer one. The board mentions two long halls on the ground floor and underground spaces used as cells. That use lasted a long time, since the same board says the basement cells served as a prison until 1950.

The wedding that made Limassol famous

The castle features in every guide because of 1191. On his way to the Holy Land, Richard the Lionheart seized Cyprus, and tradition holds that his wedding to Berengaria of Navarre took place here, with her crowning as Queen of England. The tourist board is straight about this and says the exact location of the ceremony remains open to debate. I think that’s the right way to tell it, as a tradition, without selling you a particular chapel. If it’s your own wedding you’re planning, the board suggests the castle for photos, as I explain in getting married in Cyprus.

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Inside, the Cyprus Medieval Museum

Today the castle is home to the Cyprus Medieval Museum. According to the tourist board, the collection includes medieval pottery, tombstones, Byzantine silverware, weapons, crosses, coins and other objects showing life on the island in those centuries. For me it’s the perfect companion to the building, because it puts objects to the centuries the castle has lived through, from the Byzantines to the Ottomans.

Here’s a curious fact. The castle was also the first home of the Limassol Archaeological Museum, founded within its walls in 1948. The events of 1964 ended that use, and the archaeological collection eventually moved to a building of its own in 1975.

Opening times and tickets

I’ll be upfront. Neither the hours nor the ticket price appear in the official sources I work from, and I won’t hand you figures I can’t check. Read the notice at the gate, or ask on a weekday at the tourist information desk down by the harbour.

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

What’s around it

The castle sits right on the Limassol old town route, and from the gate you’re a step from the Carob Mill, the old carob mill. Next door is also the Takis Pattichis museum of industrial pharmacy, free and open Tuesday to Sunday according to the board. Walk down a few metres and you reach the Limassol old port, where you can sit with a drink and the fortress behind you, with Limassol Marina and its yachts right alongside.

If it’s your only day in town, I’d go castle, mill, old port and old town in that order, and keep the seafront for the afternoon. The island’s other fortresses are in castles in Cyprus, and its museums in museums in Cyprus.

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

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