Ammochostos is the capital of the occupied district of the same name. It is built on the east coast of Cyprus, on the bay of the same name, at an elevation of about 10 metres. Until 1974 its harbour was the main port of the island, and the town, with its long sandy beach, its most important tourist centre. It had been a municipality since 1878. In the 1960 census it had 34,774 inhabitants, of whom 24,506 were Greeks and 6,120 Turks.¹

Name

The name is Greek and means “buried in the sand”. The German philologist Karl Müller, who edited the works of the ancient Greek geographers, explains that the word was not originally a proper name: it was the description of a deserted town covered by sand. When a settlement grew up again beside the ruins, it kept the description as its name. The evidence comes from a Greek sailing guide of late Roman times (see “Roman period”).²

The Cypriot chroniclers of the Middle Ages write “Ammochoustos”. The 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas calls the inhabitants “Ammochoustianoi”, and his contemporary Georgios Voustronios “Ammouchoustianoi”. Westerners turned the Greek name into Famagusta. The philologist Athanasios Sakellarios noted in 1890 that the Cypriots themselves never called the town “Famagosta”, but always Ammochostos.³

Under Turkish rule the new town built outside the walls was named Varosia or Varosi, from the Turkish word varos, “suburb”. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, local folk etymologies attributed the name to an imaginary “Baron Rossi”. Until the early 20th century the inhabitants called the old town within the walls Ammochostos and the new one Varosia. Around 1947 the Greek Gymnasium of Varosia was renamed the Greek Gymnasium of Ammochostos, and the Greek name gradually prevailed for the whole town.⁴

Founding and first records

Ammochostos is regarded as the successor of Arsinoe, a town with a harbour which the Greek geographer Strabo (1st century BC) mentions after Salamis, on the coast towards Cape Pedalion. Sakellarios writes that Arsinoe was later named Ammochostos. The exact site of the ancient town has not been found.⁵

As a medieval town Ammochostos grew suddenly around 1300, when King Henry II received there the refugees from Syria and Palestine, among them those from Acre.⁶

After the Turkish conquest the Christians built their houses outside the walls, to the south. The Dutch traveller Cornelis van Bruyn stayed in 1683 in a village near Ammochostos, Spiliotissa, with an underground church: this was the later neighbourhood of Chrysospiliotissa, in Kato Varosi. The 1931 census recorded separately the old town, Pano Varosi, Kato Varosi and Agios Loukas. After the Second World War the parishes merged into one another and the town spread down to the sea. The quarters of the new town were Agios Georgios, Agios Ioannis, Agios Loukas, Agios Memnon, Agios Nikolaos, Akropolis, Salamina, Stavros, Chrysi Akti and Chrysospiliotissa.⁷

Archaeological sites

In 1965 levelling works for a road near the northern entrance of the new section of the harbour brought to light a cemetery of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The Department of Antiquities excavated two rock-cut chamber tombs and five pit graves. One chamber tomb held successive burials, painted vases and coins of Ptolemy X (99–89 BC). The other had already been looted, but still held a lamp with two Erotes, an iron strigil and a bronze coin of the same king. In one of the pits 42 gold myrtle leaves from a funerary wreath were found. The archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis wrote at the time that the cemetery might help to locate Ptolemaic Arsinoe. The finds were kept in the Ammochostos Museum. In June 2025 another tomb of the same period was found in the harbour; it was excavated by the occupation regime without a permit.⁸

In 1964 the Department of Antiquities carried out a rescue excavation at the site of Kafkalla, north-west of Agios Georgios, of a small tomb of the Archaic ancient Greek period, which looters had already located. It held painted vases, among them a kylix with two bulls facing each other on either side of a lotus.⁹

In 1950–1955 the Department of Antiquities cleared the great underground gallery of the Ravelin, the outwork that protected the Land Gate, and the rock-cut moat between the gate and the Ravelin. The gallery had been destroyed in the siege of 1571 and later filled in. The works showed what the fortifications were like during the siege. In 1950 investigations also began in the courtyard of the castle.¹⁰

Scheduled Ancient Monuments include, among others, the entire medieval fortifications with the moat, the towers and the gates, the castle (the “Tower of Othello”), the Venetian palace, the cathedral of Agios Nikolaos, many churches, medieval houses and the medieval salt store.

Antiquity

A few kilometres north of the town lie Egkomi, a large town of the pre-Greek period, and Salamis, the most important of the ancient Greek kingdoms of Cyprus, which are described on their own pages. The land of Ammochostos most probably belonged to the kingdom of Salamis. From the land of the town itself, the oldest find in the register of excavations is the Archaic tomb at Kafkalla.

Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period

Arsinoe took its name from the sister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who, according to Sakellarios, also built other towns of the same name in Cyprus in her honour. Strabo mentions the town and its harbour. The tomb with the coins of Ptolemy X and the gold myrtle leaves from the harbour cemetery are the first finds that may belong to it.¹¹

Roman period

The first known mention of the name is in the “Stadiasmus of the Great Sea”, a Greek sailing guide to the harbours of the Mediterranean. According to Müller, its section on Cyprus was written between AD 250 and 300:¹²

Ἀπὸ δὲ τοῦ Πηδαλίου ἐπὶ νήσους στάδιοι π΄· πόλις ἐστὶν ἔρημος, λεγομένη Ἀμμόχωστος· ἔχει δὲ λιμένα παντὶ ἀνέμῳ· ἔχει δὲ ἐν τῇ καταγωγῇ χοιράδας· διαφυλάττου.

“From Pedalion [today’s Cape Greco] to the islets, 80 stades; there is a deserted town called Ammochostos. It has a harbour for every wind, but at its entrance there are reefs; beware.”

The islets and the reefs are those that protect the harbour of Ammochostos to this day.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

The 16th-century Cypriot historian Stephanos Lusignan writes that in 1212 Pope Innocent III approved the transfer of the Greek archbishopric from Ammochostos to Lefkosia. Ammochostos was, in other words, until then the seat of the Greek archbishop, who had inherited the throne of Constantia, the city that succeeded Salamis. Beside the great Agios Georgios of the Greeks survives the small chapel of Agios Symeon, which the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, describes as the original, older church of the Greeks. The German pilgrim Wilbrand von Oldenburg, who passed through in 1211, found a town built beside the sea, with a good harbour and light fortifications, near the ruins of the city from which, as he was told, Saint Epiphanios came.¹³

Frankish rule

In the years of Frankish rule Ammochostos became the main port of the kingdom of Cyprus. The German priest Ludolf von Suchen, who visited it in the 1330s, calls it the richest of all cities, with harbours for the whole sea and crowds of merchants and pilgrims. Machairas writes that all the trade between the West and Syria was gathered there. The kings of Cyprus were crowned kings of Jerusalem in the cathedral of Agios Nikolaos of Ammochostos.¹⁴

The town was divided into two halves: the Latin one to the north and west, and the Orthodox one to the south and east. In the 14th century the Greeks of the town built, beside the old chapel of Agios Symeon, the great Gothic cathedral of Agios Georgios of the Greeks, which was meant to rival the Latin cathedral.¹⁵

At the coronation of Peter II as king of Jerusalem, in October 1372, the Genoese and the Venetians of the town clashed over precedence. Machairas describes how the clash led to war with Genoa. In 1373 the Genoese seized Ammochostos and held it for almost a century. The Italian notary Nicola Martoni, who visited it in 1394, found almost a third of the town uninhabited and the houses in ruins since the Genoese had come. He writes that a few Genoese and many Greeks lived there, “because the whole island is inhabited by Greeks”, and that a great quantity of camlet was made there, for which the women of the town spun the yarn. In January 1464 King James II forced the Genoese to surrender the town.¹⁶

Venetian rule

The Venetians made Ammochostos the centre of their defence of Cyprus and surrounded it with the strong walls and bastions that survive to this day. In the war of 1570–71, after the fall of Lefkosia, Ammochostos held out for ten months. At the beginning of August 1571 the exhausted defenders capitulated. The Greeks and the Albanians were preparing to board the ships with their families when the Turkish commander-in-chief Lala Mustafa broke the terms. The Venetian historian Paolo Paruta writes that Mustafa slaughtered the officers and flayed alive the governor of the town, Marco Antonio Bragadin.¹⁷

Turkish rule

After the conquest the Turks drove the Christians out of the town within the walls. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, this was done by a sultan’s decree of 1573. The Greeks settled in the gardens outside the walls, where Varosia took shape. The Flemish traveller de Stochove, who passed through in 1631, stayed in the house of a Greek in the suburbs, because it was almost impossible to enter the town without the pasha’s permission. The Dutch professor Johannes Heyman, who travelled in the East in the early 18th century, writes that the Greeks were not allowed to live in the town, that their shops inside it had to close at sunset and that no Greek could enter on horseback. Their houses were scattered in the countryside, each with its own garden. The English traveller Richard Pococke, in 1738, stayed in the house of a Christian in the village half a mile south of Ammochostos, “where the Christians live, who are not permitted to dwell within the city”. Sakellarios notes that the gate was closed every evening and the Christians who had workshops inside the town had to leave. It stayed open at night as well only from British rule onwards. In the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Varosia is recorded as a town, separately from the castle of Ammochostos.¹⁸

British rule

In the years of British rule Varosia became the real town. The railway linking Ammochostos with Lefkosia was opened in 1905 and later extended to Morfou and Evrychou. The last train reached Ammochostos on 31 December 1951. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the harbour was developed in 1903–1906 and again from 1926, and gradually became the commercial centre of the island.¹⁹

The town acquired a rich Greek social life. According to the same Encyclopaedia, the “Evagoras” Gymnastic Club was founded in 1903 and the “Anorthosis” Reading Room in 1911, by more than a hundred working people, for national, intellectual and musical events. A weekly newspaper began to appear there in 1907, and in 1913 the first Greek newspaper for women in Cyprus was published in the town. The Lyceum of Greek Women of Ammochostos was founded in 1930. According to the same source, the Greek families still living within the walls were forced in 1957–58 to abandon their homes because of attacks by Turkish nationalists.²⁰

Churches and monasteries

Until 1974 the town had ten parishes. The parish churches were Agios Nikolaos (17th–19th century), Agia Zoni (16th–20th century), Agios Memnon (19th century), Apostolos Loukas (18th century), Agios Georgios of Salamina (18th century), Agia Paraskevi in Kato Varosi, Timios Stavros, Agios Ioannis Prodromos and Agia Triada (20th century).²¹

The Panagia Chrysospiliotissa, in Kato Varosi, was the most remarkable church of the town. It is underground: a stairway leads down into an ancient rock-cut tomb, which became a church with wall paintings. The 2009 list dates the underground part to the 14th century and the building above it to the 20th. In the Middle Ages it was known as the “Panagia of the Cave”. The Italian priest Jacobus de Verona, who celebrated mass there in 1335, writes that whoever arrived in the harbour went at once to pay homage, and Martoni that both Greeks and Latins visited it.²²

Within the walls survive the ruins of Agios Georgios of the Greeks (14th century), the Orthodox cathedral of the medieval town, with the attached chapel of Agios Symeon (13th century). The vaults of the cathedral collapsed in the bombardment of 1571. Within the walls there are also Agios Nikolaos of the Greeks (14th–15th century), Agia Zoni and Timios Stavros (15th–16th century). Agios Georgios Exorinos was the church of the Nestorians, Christians from Syria. According to Jeffery, it was built by the wealthy merchant brothers Lakha, and the 2009 list dates it to the early 14th century. Under Turkish rule it was used as a stable for camels. Under British rule the government granted it to the Greeks of the old town, who repaired it.²³ Agios Georgios of the Greeks, Agios Georgios Exorinos, Agia Zoni and Agios Nikolaos are scheduled Ancient Monuments.

Under Turkish rule the Latin cathedral of Agios Nikolaos, built from 1311 for the coronation of the kings, and the church of Saints Peter and Paul were converted into mosques.²⁴ The town also had the Maronite church of Agia Anna and the Armenian church of the Panagia, as well as the chapels of Agia Aikaterini, Agios Ioannis and Agios Panteleimon. The Greek Orthodox cemetery of the Apostolos Loukas quarter lies about 1.7 kilometres west of the Land Gate.²⁵

Economy and society

Ammochostos was known for its oranges. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Chatzipetros Papageorgiou brought in the Jaffa orange tree around 1863 and Evangelos Loizou the mandarin tree from Constantinople in 1870. The orchards were watered at first with animal-driven water wheels and from 1900 with windmills.²⁶ From 1971 the orange growers also had their own co-operative, SEPAL Ammochostos–Larnaka. The town was also the seat of the Co-operative Carob Marketing Union (1946), co-operative savings banks and credit societies, and co-operative grocery stores.

After 1960 the town developed rapidly. According to the Union of Cyprus Municipalities, in 1973 31.5% of the hotels of Cyprus were in Ammochostos, with 45% of the island’s beds. The Anthestiria, the Orange Festival and Kataklysmos were the town’s great festivals.²⁷

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the first clear mention of a “school of Varosia” is in a report of Archbishop Makarios I in 1860, with a monitorial system and 30 pupils. From 1860 to 1894 it was directed by Loukas Paisiou, a pupil of Sakellarios, who himself wrote on the history and topography of Cyprus. The town’s higher Greek school gradually became a junior gymnasium, and in 1924 it was recognised by the Greek Ministry of Education as a full six-year gymnasium. Its building was built in 1926 to plans from Greece.²⁸

In the school year 1973–74 the town had 17 Greek primary schools, with 4,038 pupils and 139 teachers, a kindergarten with 112 children and the “Apostolos Varnavas” School for Children with Special Needs. In secondary education there were three gymnasia, one of them for girls, and the Ammochostos Technical School.

Population

In 1931 Ammochostos had 8,771 inhabitants, of whom 7,074 were Christians and 1,697 Muslims. The Christians lived almost all in Varosia and Agios Loukas, while within the walls lived 1,613 Muslims and 283 Christians. In 1946 it had 16,194 inhabitants: 13,106 Orthodox, 2,699 Muslims and 389 others (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 the inhabitants numbered 34,774, of whom 24,506 were Greeks, 6,120 Turks, 3,663 British, 152 Armenians, 24 Maronites and 241 others. In 1973 the Greeks numbered 31,960, and the Turks were estimated at about 7,000 (estimate).

Municipality

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the first mayor under British rule was, in 1878–1879, Sotirios Michailidis (Emfietzis). The municipal council formed in 1879 had jurisdiction over both Varosia and the old town until 1958. In 1879 the council imposed a levy on the oranges, lemons and pomegranates exported from the harbour, to maintain the town’s schools. Since the invasion the Municipality of Ammochostos continues to function in the free areas.²⁹

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis referendum 9,876 inhabitants signed in the parishes of the town, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants.

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 259 Greek inhabitants of the town who took part in or supported the Struggle. In December 1955 Andreas Dimitriou, secretary of the porters’ union in Ammochostos, seized weapons from the military stores in the harbour, which were sent to the guerrilla groups. He was hanged on 10 May 1956. Petrakis Giallouros from Rizokarpaso, a final-year pupil of the Greek Gymnasium of Ammochostos and head of the EOKA pupils’ groups, was killed by the British on 7 February 1956, in a demonstration he was leading. Panagiotis Toumazou of Ammochostos, a member of the same pupils’ group, fell in an ambush near Kakopetria on 22 October 1958. On the night of 3 October 1958 British soldiers attacked the Greeks of the town, in reprisal for the murder of an Englishwoman, which EOKA had condemned. The schoolboy Loukas Louka and the shoemaker Panagiotis Chrysostomou died from the beatings.³⁰

The Turkish invasion of 1974

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, from 20 July 1974 there was heavy fighting around the harbour, and in the second phase of the invasion the Turkish army captured the town on 16 and 17 August 1974. The European Commission of Human Rights heard a witness from Ammochostos on the fear that the acts of the Turkish army had spread among the Greeks, and found that in the second phase whole areas were evacuated by their Greek inhabitants before the army arrived. The owner of the “Constantia” hotel, who had stayed in the town because his daughter was bedridden, was ordered by the Turkish military authorities to leave. The Greek population of Ammochostos was subjected to ethnic cleansing.³¹

Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants. The new town was fenced off and left deserted. In 1984 the UN Security Council considered any attempt to settle it by people other than its inhabitants inadmissible and called for it to be transferred to the administration of the UN. In 2021 it condemned the announcement by Turkey and the occupation authority that a further part of it would be opened, and called for the reversal of all steps taken in the fenced-off town since October 2020.³²

Sixty-three people of Ammochostos, 34 of them civilians and 29 soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of 25 have been located and identified, while 38 are still missing. Twenty-four disappeared within Ammochostos and 39 elsewhere, mainly in the area of Kato Deryneia (12) and in the Sygchari–Pellapais area, as well as at places in the Keryneia district, the Mesaoria and Lefkosia. Sixteen more people of Ammochostos were killed elsewhere, 13 soldiers and 3 civilians, among them in Lefkosia, Mia Milia, Larnaka, Lemesos, Tziaos and Rizokarpaso. In Ammochostos itself 41 dead of 1974 are recorded: 22 soldiers and 19 civilians, at the harbour, at Sakkaria, at Agios Memnon, at the hospital and at other points in the town.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the Panagia Chrysospiliotissa into a mosque. At Agia Zoni the crosses and the bells were removed. Agia Paraskevi, inside the fenced-off town, is half-ruined, and Agios Ioannis Prodromos, Agios Nikolaos, Agios Memnon, Timios Stavros and Agia Triada lie in a military zone, inaccessible. Agios Georgios Exorinos, which the Greeks had been unable to use since the late 1950s, became, among other things, a cultural centre; in 2014 the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in it again, for the first time after many years.³³