Galinoporni Γαληνόπορνη

Ammochostos District

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History

Galinoporni is a Turkish community in the occupied district of Ammochostos, in the Karpasia. It lies 56 kilometres northeast of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 90 metres, in a pass between the wooded hills of Vounon and Skoutelli.1 The village is built on a slope full of ancient rock-cut tombs. In the 1960 census it had 836 inhabitants, all of them Turks.

Name

At the end of the 15th century, in a Venetian list published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, two parts of the village appear, “Esso Galinoporni” and “Exo Galinoporni”, that is, Inner (Eso) and Outer (Exo) Galinoporni.2 In the 1931 census the village is written “Galinoporni”.

Archaeological sites

The English archaeologist David Hogarth, who toured the Karpasia in 1888, saw about a hundred rock-cut tombs on the eastern slope on which the village is built. Many houses were built onto them, and the inhabitants used the tombs as inner rooms, store-rooms and stables. Many were square pits cut into the rock, with a ledge for a lid, and Hogarth tentatively dated them to the 5th or 4th century BC.3 The great tomb is cut into the cliff immediately east of the village, near the ruins of the church of Agia Anna. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in 1918, describes a central chamber about 21 metres long with six side chambers, long used as a goat pen.4 The tomb and the ruins of Agia Anna are an Ancient Monument in the Register of Ancient Monuments of the Department of Antiquities.5

In 1928 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition excavated at Trachonas, in an ancient cemetery with tombs from the Geometric ancient Greek to the Ptolemaic Greek period, a built tomb under a tumulus, with a false-vaulted chamber and two relief figures above the entrance, which the excavators interpreted as a ritual dance. The tomb was built in the Archaic ancient Greek period and was used again in the Ptolemaic Greek period. In the same year the Expedition excavated a sanctuary at Oura, where many fragments of limestone statuettes were found, a large bearded head and a seated statue almost one metre high, from shortly before 500 BC, which according to the Swedish archaeologist Alfred Westholm probably represents a Cypriot king or priest. The statue is now in Stockholm.6

At Trachonas there was also a small pre-Greek cemetery that had been plundered by looters; in 1952 the Department of Antiquities tried to save the finds, and some vessels went to the Cyprus Museum.7 In 1956, during repairs to the road to Gialousa, two pre-Greek chamber tombs were found and excavated by the Department; one of them held 154 vessels and bronze objects.8

Since 2004 the occupation regime has been excavating, without authorisation, on the hill of Vasilis, near the village. Two hoards of bronze objects were found there, a large pre-Greek building with storage jars and painted wall plaster, and beneath it traces of even older round houses.9

Venetian rule

In the Venetian list, Inner Galinoporni belonged to the royal domain, in the bailiwick of Karpasia, while Outer Galinoporni was one of the villages of Marco Piacenti, of whom Mas Latrie notes that he left very little trace in the sources.10

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Galinoporni is recorded as a Muslim village, with 30 property-owning households. The owners had cotton fields and threshing floors, while much of their land was barren or fallow. They had 32 mulberry trees, more than 640 sheep, oxen and horses, six mills turned by horses and seven animal pens.11

British rule

Hogarth notes that the Muslim inhabitants of the central villages of the Karpasia, Agios Andronikos, Elisis, Koroveia and Galinoporni, spoke Greek and hardly knew any Turkish.12

Churches and monasteries

The church of Agia Anna, near the great tomb, was already in ruins when Jeffery recorded it; he mentions two more small shrines in the village, also in ruins.13 According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, a spring in the ravine below the church was known until recent times as the “holy water of Agia Anna”.14

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereals, pulses, carob trees and a little tobacco were grown in the village, while most of its land was uncultivated or state forest. Livestock farming was well developed: the inhabitants kept 4,779 sheep, 3,138 goats, 38 oxen and 18 cows.15

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Galinoporni had 415 inhabitants in 1881, 352 in 1891, 457 in 1901, 531 in 1911 and 597 in 1921.16 In 1931 it had 595 inhabitants, 583 Muslims and 12 Christians, and in 1946 834, of whom 833 were Muslims and one Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 836 inhabitants, all of them Turks, and in 1973 around 900 Turkish inhabitants (estimate).

  1. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Γαληνόπορνη».↩︎

  2. L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, vol. 3 (1852–1861), pp. 508, 512.↩︎

  3. D. G. Hogarth, Devia Cypria (London 1889), p. 76.↩︎

  4. G. Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (1918), p. 260.↩︎

  5. Department of Antiquities, Register of Ancient Monuments (May 2025).↩︎

  6. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Galinoporni: Swedish Cyprus Expedition at Trachonas, Kapsalia and Oura» (accessed 1.11.2026).↩︎

  7. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Galinoporni-Trachonas: attempted rescue of looted tombs» (accessed 1.11.2026).↩︎

  8. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Galinoporni: rescue of two Middle Bronze Age chamber tombs» (accessed 1.11.2026).↩︎

  9. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Kral Tepesi/Vasili (Galinoporni-Vasili): the hoard rescue and excavation» (accessed 3.11.2026); A Complete Gazetteer of Cyprus, vol. 1, p. 228.↩︎

  10. L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, vol. 3 (1852–1861), pp. 508, 512.↩︎

  11. The 1832/33 Ottoman Property Survey of Cyprus (Harokopio University, Sylvia Ioannou Foundation), «Galinoporni» (accessed 3.11.2026).↩︎

  12. D. G. Hogarth, Devia Cypria (London 1889), p. 54.↩︎

  13. G. Jeffery, A Description of the Historic Monuments of Cyprus (1918), p. 260.↩︎

  14. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Γαληνόπορνη».↩︎

  15. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Γαληνόπορνη».↩︎

  16. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Γαληνόπορνη».↩︎

Sources (12)

Other Information

Postal Code

The Cyprus Post postal code for this community was and is 5874.