Machairas, the forest monastery of Nicosia district

South of the Nicosia plain the landscape suddenly turns to pines and mountains. There, in the Machairas forest, stands one of the island’s most historic monasteries. Here’s what it holds and, above all, how to visit properly, because it has rules. I’m drawing on the Troodos Development Company, the regional development body for the mountains, and the Nicosia Tourism Board. The wider area is in Nicosia district.

A royal monastery

It lies below Mount Machaira, on the slopes of Kionia, at 870 metres. It’s one of the royal and stavropegic monasteries of Cyprus, meaning it doesn’t answer to the local bishop. Its great treasure is the miraculous icon of the Virgin of Machairas, which tradition credits to St Luke the Evangelist. The legend goes that a hermit brought it to the island in the 8th or 9th century, that it lay hidden, and that when it was finally found the monastery was built on the spot.

What you see today is more recent. The 19-metre bell tower dates from 1900, and the carved wooden iconostasis was made by Georgios Kyriakou between 1919 and 1921. A storage jar kept in Fikardou records, according to the Tourism Board, that in 1892 a great fire swept through the monastery and nothing was saved. Below the monastery, the vestry, renovated with help from the Leventis Foundation, shows the monks’ original cells, the stable and the storerooms, with old books, manuscripts and icons.

A place of remembrance

The same source notes that the monastery sheltered EOKA fighters during the 1955-1959 campaign against British rule, which gives it weight in recent Cypriot history. If that period interests you, the National Struggle Museum in Nicosia covers it in detail.

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House rules

This isn’t a place to wing it. Photo and video cameras aren’t allowed within the grounds. Group visits are only accepted on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 9:00 to 12:00, by calling +357 22 359 334 first, and the monastery is closed on public holidays. I haven’t found published hours for individual visitors, so I’d phone before driving up. Shoulders and knees covered, of course.

Machairas in the capital

The monastery has a foothold in Nicosia too. One of the Tourism Board’s free guided walks starts at Eleftheria Square and takes in the church of St Eleftherios, which the board describes as a dependency of Machairas Monastery in the city, before continuing to the mausoleum of the ethnomartyrs, the town hall and the Apostle Barnabas Cathedral. If you won’t make it up to the forest, it’s a way to touch on its story without leaving the capital, though for me the point of Machairas is the setting, among the pines.

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The forest around it

The Tourism Board puts Machairas National Forest Park about 25 km south of Nicosia, with picnic areas and trails. The Kionia site, with a fountain and tables among the pines, is the start of the Kionia to Profitis Ilias trail, which drops towards Lythrodontas. And under 15 minutes away, according to the board, is Fikardou, the museum village, which rounds off the day nicely. On the way back down to the plain lies the ancient site of Tamassos, with Agios Irakleidios Convent a kilometre and a half away, linked to the dam by the board’s bike route. The others on the island, from Stavrovouni to Kykkos, are in monasteries in Cyprus.

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