Agios Amvrosios is a large Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 23 kilometres east of Keryneia, at an elevation of 150 metres, on the northern foothills of the Pentadaktylos, about a kilometre from the sea. Its land ran from the forests of the range down to the shore. In the 1960 census it had 1,508 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The village bears the name of Saint Ambrose (Agios Amvrosios), to whom its parish church is dedicated. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, notes that it was also called “Ayia Ghrosh”.

Antiquity

In the ancient Greek period the village’s area most probably lay on the boundary between the Greek kingdoms of Keryneia and Chytroi. On the village’s shore, at Vasileio and Limenari, the Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios, who travelled in Cyprus in the 19th century, saw ruins built of well-dressed stone. At Limenari, he writes, ships still put in from time to time. In Sakellarios’s view these coastal sites were either lookouts against the pirates who often raided this coast, or the citadels of small ancient towns that had been utterly destroyed.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

Jeffery writes that, although the village looked modern, floors of white stone tesserae from houses of the Greek medieval period could be seen in several places in it. About three kilometres south-east of the village stands the Greek Orthodox church of Panagia Ypati (Apati). It is a single-nave domed church of the 12th century, from the middle Greek medieval period, and a scheduled ancient monument.

Frankish and Venetian rule

Three Greek Orthodox country chapels of the village date from the 15th and 16th centuries: Agios Georgios tou Platymati, of the 15th century, and Agios Sintis and a second Agios Georgios, of the 16th. The ruined chapel of Agia Aikaterini also stands in the countryside.

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Agios Amvrosios is recorded as a Christian village of 44 property-holding households. The villagers owned 950 olive trees, 144 carob trees, vineyards, grain fields, orchards, an olive press and herds of goats. Sakellarios found the village built above the coast road.

Between the 19th and the 20th century the people of Agios Amvrosios gained a large new parish church of Agios Amvrosios. Jeffery describes it in 1918 as an imposing modern building that had taken the place of the village’s older church.

British rule

During British rule Agios Amvrosios grew. Its economy rested on olives, carobs, cereals and livestock. The Olive Growers’ Cooperative Society was founded in 1939 and the Apricot Growers’ Cooperative Society in 1946. The village’s apricots remained famous until 1974: according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, 10,625 apricot trees were counted in 1971. The Union of Communities of Keryneia District records that the village became a centre for its neighbours, with a police station, a hospital, flour mills and olive presses, and that it was known throughout Cyprus for its folk poets (poiitarides). In 1892 the government closed the old village cemetery; the Greek Orthodox cemetery that replaced it lies about half a kilometre north-east of the centre.¹

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 980 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 66 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

Education

According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, during Turkish rule the boys of the village were taught at the nearby monastery of Panagia Melandryna, and after it ended a Greek primary school was founded in the village. A private gymnasium opened in 1934; it became a community school in 1959 and a public one in 1960. The Greek Gymnasium of Agios Amvrosios also took pupils from Chartzia, Kalograia and Trypimeni. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school had 177 pupils and 6 teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 481 inhabitants in 1881, 566 in 1891, 764 in 1901, 906 in 1911 and 1,114 in 1921.² Agios Amvrosios had 1,367 inhabitants in 1931 and 1,779 in 1946. In 1960 it had 1,508 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 1,543.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Amvrosios was taken by the Turkish army, and its entire Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Ten people from Agios Amvrosios, one a civilian and nine soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of five have been located and identified, while five are still missing. Nine vanished elsewhere, in Kyrenia and at other places in the Kyrenia district. The one, a civilian, vanished in the village itself: a gymnasium pupil who was arrested in Agios Amvrosios and last seen there on 21 September 1974. Two other soldiers from the village were killed elsewhere, at Glykiotissa and at Karavas.

The occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of Agios Amvrosios into a mosque. Panagia Ypati has been desecrated, looted and seriously damaged, and its iconostasis and altar have been demolished. The occupation authorities have illegally turned the monastery of Panagia Ypati into a sheepfold. The chapel of Agios Dimitrianos, on the shore, has been desecrated, looted, seriously damaged and used as a storehouse. Agios Georgios tou Platymati has been desecrated, looted and seriously damaged.