Pano Arodes, the village of the Knights of Rhodes

Pano Arodes is a small green village on the Laona plateau, among vineyards and orchards, with narrow lanes of stone houses. It doesn’t have many sights, but it does have one of the strangest traditions in Cyprus. Here’s what it is. The whole area is covered in Akamas peninsula.

A village of the Knights of St John

Akamas Municipality puts the Arodes villages at 590 m, 23 km from Paphos, on the edge of the Akamas nature reserve, which runs down to the Avakas Gorge and the coast. The Pafos tourism board explains that there are two settlements, Pano Arodes, traditionally Greek Cypriot, and Kato Arodes, formerly Turkish Cypriot, about 7 km from the sea. Pano Arodes had 139 residents in 2021.

The name comes from the island of Rhodes. In the Middle Ages the village was called Rhodos because it belonged to the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, whose headquarters were in Rhodes until 1522.

What to see in Pano Arodes

The church of Agios Kalandionas was built in the 18th century and no other church in Cyprus is dedicated to this saint. It has arches and a carved wooden iconostasis. Kalandion was archbishop of Antioch, refused to sign the union between Orthodox and Monophysites proposed by Emperor Zeno, was exiled to Egypt and reached Cyprus at the end of the 5th century, where he lived as an ascetic in Arodes. He’s the village’s patron saint and his feast is on 26 April.

In the churchyard are two carved tombs that tradition attributes to Agios Agapitikos and Agios Misitikos, two of the three hundred saints who came from Palestine and Syria. The custom is to scrape a little dust from one of them and slip it into someone’s water, Agapitikos’s to make them fall in love and Misitikos’s for revenge. The tourism board admits it sits uneasily with Christianity, but it lives on. The same yard has an old millstone, a stone fountain and the graves of four EOKA fighters born in the village.

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The geology centre and other visits

The Akamas Geology and Palaeontology Information Centre opened in April 2022 in the old primary school. Using rocks and fossils from the peninsula, it explains how Cyprus was formed, an island that became a model for geologists studying how oceans evolve.

North of a cave dedicated to Panagia Chrysospiliotissa stands a chapel of the same name built in 1947, in the area of Thermokrini, a Byzantine and medieval settlement that was later abandoned.

Getting there

Pafos Buses routes 641 and 648 pass through Kato and Pano Arodes, the first between Paphos and Polis and the second between Coral Bay and Polis. Close by are Kathikas and its wineries.

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

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