Nicosia inside the walls
The capital from the walls. It is a city for walking and for dinner, not for a beach bag.
Photo: August Dominus / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Nicosia is the last divided capital in Europe, and the walls are the first thing to understand about it. The Venetians built them in the 1560s: a perfect circle of eleven bastions, three miles round, still complete. The old city is everything inside that circle, and the Green Line runs through the middle of it, east to west.
The southern half is the one you will walk first. Ledra Street is the spine, a pedestrian shopping street that ends at a checkpoint. Off it, the lanes of Laiki Geitonia and the streets around Faneromeni church are where the cafés are; further east, the Chrysaliniotissa quarter has been restored house by house and is the quietest, prettiest part of the old town.
Crossing
Take your passport or ID card to the Ledra Street checkpoint and walk through; it takes two minutes. On the other side is a different city with the same walls — Büyük Han, the Selimiye mosque that was a Gothic cathedral, the covered bazaar. Come back the same way before the evening.
The evening
Nicosia is where Cypriots who live in Cyprus go out, and it eats late. The wine bars and kitchens inside the walls fill after nine on a weeknight with people who are not on holiday. That is the Nicosia a membership is for: a table on a Wednesday, in a city that does not need you to be there.
Perks nearby
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Nicosia: more places
All places in Nicosia →
Cyprus MuseumThe island's oldest and largest archaeological museum, tracing 11,000 years of Cypriot history from Neolithic idols to Roman marble.
Famagusta Gate & Venetian WallsThe grandest of the three gates in Nicosia's 16th-century Venetian walls, now a cultural centre at the edge of the old town.
Shacolas Tower ObservatoryA museum and observation deck high above Ledra Street, with a 360-degree view across the divided capital and the Kyrenia mountains.