Agios Andronikos is a large, mixed community in the occupied district of Ammochostos, on the Karpasia peninsula. It lies 47 kilometres north-east of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 120 metres, on the northern side of the Karpasia ridge, between Koilanemos and Aigialousa.¹ In the 1960 census it had 1,238 inhabitants, of whom 771 were Greeks and 434 Turks.

Name

The village took its name from Saint Andronikos, to whom its parish church is dedicated. The 18th-century English traveller Richard Pococke writes the name “Andronica” in 1738.²

Founding and first records

The earliest written record of the village found is that of Pococke, who passed through it in 1738, coming from Aigialousa.³ The official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) marks on the village’s land, to the east, the settlement of Elisi, and near the village the place-name Kato Chorion (“Lower Village”).⁴

Archaeological sites

At the locality Trachonas the Register of Ancient Monuments protects the site and remains of an ancient tomb, where the ruins of the church of Agios Fokas also stand.

Turkish rule

Pococke noted that part of the inhabitants were Turks, and that they were so afraid of the corsairs that they went to sleep in the mountains; he was told that some had died of cold there.⁵ In 1750 the British consul at Aleppo Alexander Drummond, who toured Karpasia, wrote of the great rural sweetness of the country around Agios Andronikos as far as Aigialousa.⁶

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Agios Andronikos is entered as a mixed village, with 57 property-holding households. The owners had cotton fields, grain fields, mulberry gardens for the silkworm, many gardens and many springs. They had 184 olive trees, mostly wild olives, and a few carobs, water mills and mills turned by horses, an olive press, more than 550 sheep, and oxen, cows, horses and mules.⁷

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of the village, Agios Andronikos, dates from the 18th century. The church of Agia Fotou or Agia Fotini, the village’s patron saint according to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, was built in the 19th century; an inscription over the west door bears the date 1868. It has a single nave and a three-storey bell tower, and is an Ancient Monument. Beside it is the rock-cut cave of Agia Fotini, of the 15th century, with a holy spring.⁸

At the north-western edge of the old village stands the church of Panagia Agkariotissa, of the 15th or 16th century, and in the cemetery, to the north-east, the church of Agia Marina.⁹

Economy and society

According to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, Agios Andronikos was a fertile village, known for its colocasia, its tobacco and its mulberry trees, on which silkworms were reared for silk, as already in the survey of 1832/33. Six water mills worked along the river.¹⁰

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of the village had 101 pupils and four teachers.

Population

The Greek scholar Athanasios Sakellarios records Agios Andronikos in 1890 with 650 inhabitants.¹¹ In 1946 the village had 1,380 inhabitants, 960 Orthodox and 420 Muslims (the 1946 census recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,238 inhabitants, 771 Greeks and 434 Turks, and in 1973 712 Greeks and about 400 Turks (estimate).

National struggles

The EOKA Fighters’ Register lists 171 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Andronikos was occupied by the Turkish army. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, some of the Greek inhabitants fled before the advancing Turkish army, while 560 stayed in their homes. As in other villages of northern Karpasia, they found themselves in confinement, enclaved.¹² In October 1975 most of them were forced to leave for the free areas.¹³ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, ten Greeks were still living in the village in 1979 and eight in December 1985.¹⁴ In March 2026 one enclaved person lived in Agios Andronikos.¹⁵ The other Greek inhabitants were ethnically cleansed, and the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return.

One inhabitant of Agios Andronikos, a soldier, went missing in the area of Agios Pavlos, at Vasileia in the district of Keryneia, and is still missing. Two deaths are recorded in the village itself, both of them enclaved civilians. Two more inhabitants of the village, both civilians, are recorded among the dead of 1974 elsewhere, one at Aigialousa and one at the Athalassa psychiatric hospital.

In 2022 the church of Agia Fotou was in poor condition, with large cracks, and closed for safety reasons; the saint’s cave still receives pilgrims. The church of Panagia Agkariotissa has been desecrated and is used as a hay barn, without its doors, windows and bell. The cemetery is derelict: its wall has collapsed in many places, the grave crosses are missing, and Agia Marina is in ruins.¹⁶