Thalassa Museum, Ayia Napa's museum of the sea

Thalassa is one of those visits you don’t expect in a beach town and that win you over to it. A modern museum devoted entirely to the sea, a few steps from the square. Here’s what’s inside, the opening hours and the price. What else to do in town is in Ayia Napa.

A museum devoted to the sea

The Thalassa municipal museum, thalassa meaning sea in Greek, opened in August 2005 in association with the Pierides Foundation, the Hellenic Institute for the Preservation of Nautical Tradition and the Tornaritis-Pierides Marine Life Foundation. Its website explains that it sets out to show the sea’s weight in the island’s history, from palaeontology and prehistory to the present, and presents itself as the first museum of its kind in the Mediterranean.

The building, by architects Zenon and Christina Sierepklis, has three storeys of marble, onyx, wood and metal, arranged over six levels. Exhibits are shown in four ways, in under-floor cases, in modern showcases, standing around the rooms or hanging from the ceiling. There’s also a room for talks and workshops and an outdoor amphitheatre.

What to see at the Thalassa Museum

For Visit Famagusta, the regional tourism site, the star piece is a full-size replica of the Kyrenia ship, a Classical-era merchant vessel from around 400 BC. Nearby stands another replica, of a Mesolithic papyrus boat from around 9200 BC, and a passara, a traditional 19th-century Cypriot boat. The original ship is on show in Kyrenia Castle, in the north of the island.

The palaeontology section has fossil sea urchins and corals, gypsum, and bones and skulls of the pygmy hippos and dwarf elephants that once lived on Cyprus, about 8,000 years old. There are Cypriot antiquities too, including a clay sarcophagus and a statuette from the Makronissos cemetery.

On the lower level is the Tornaritis-Pierides Marine Life Museum, with preserved fish, turtles and marine mammals, shells, starfish, crabs, lobsters, corals and sponges from around the island. The building also hosts the art gallery of the municipality of Famagusta, with some 140 works by Cypriot and Greek artists.

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Opening hours and price

The museum website gives the same hours all year, 9:00 to 14:00 on Mondays and Saturdays and 9:00 to 17:00 Tuesday to Friday, closed on Sundays. Entry costs €4 for adults, €2.50 each for groups of ten or more and for university and high school students, and €1.50 for primary and secondary pupils.

The museum is accessible to people with disabilities and visual impairments, with touch exhibits and QR codes on some pieces.

Getting there

It’s in the centre, a stroll from the square and Ayia Napa monastery, and close to the old aqueduct. OSEA’s circular routes 201 and 202 have a stop named after it, and a daytime single costs €2. To stay nearby, see hotels in Ayia Napa.

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

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

To sleep close to everything, search places to stay in Ayia Napa on Booking.com and filter by area before price.