Kythrea is an occupied small town of the district of Nicosia. It lies 13 kilometres north-east of Nicosia, at an altitude of 150 metres, on the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos, at the northern edge of the Mesaoria. Its life depended on the Kefalovryso, the largest spring in Cyprus, which watered its gardens and turned its water mills. It had six parishes, among them Chrysida, formerly a separate village, and it was a municipality from 1915. In the 1960 census it had 2,955 inhabitants, of whom 2,951 were Greeks.¹

Name

Kythrea keeps, altered by the centuries, the name of the ancient city of Chytroi, on whose land it stands. The 6th-century Greek scholar Stephanus of Byzantium, who compiled a lexicon of the cities of the Greek world, calls it Chytroi and its citizens Chytrioi. The Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century AD) writes Chytros, among the inland cities of Cyprus.² The 19th-century Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios, who studied the language and history of Cyprus, records the later forms: Kythroi in the geographer Hierocles in the 6th century, Kythria in the biographer of Saint Epiphanios, Kythereia in the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century, and Kythria in the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas, who calls the inhabitants Kythriotes. In the local dialect the town was called Kyrka, pronounced Tsirka, and its people Kyrkotes.³

In the documents of Frankish rule the name is written in French “la Quitrie” or “la Quithrie”, and the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron writes “Chitria”.⁴

Because the name recalled Kythereia, an epithet of Aphrodite, the inhabitants of the 19th century said that their land was the ancient Kythera, the city of the goddess. The 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie notes that European scholars did not accept this tradition.⁵

Founding and first records

According to ancient tradition, which Stephanus preserves from the Greek historian Xenagoras, Chytroi took its name from Chytros, son of Alexander and grandson of Akamas, that is, of the son of Theseus, the mythical king of Athens. Through this tradition the Chytrians linked the beginning of their city with Athens.⁶

The first written record of the city is on a prism of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, of 673/2 BC, which lists the ten kings of Cyprus who, together with other kings of the eastern Mediterranean, sent materials for his palace at Nineveh. Second in the list is “Pilagura, king of Kitrusi”, that is, of Chytroi, in whom scholars recognise the Greek name Pylagoras or Philagoras.⁷

The ancient city lay east of present-day Kythrea, around the ruined church of Agios Dimitrianos. Bustron writes that the place was called “Paglia Piscopia”, that is, Old Episkopi, after the former seat of the bishops.⁸ After the city was plundered by the Arabs in the 10th century, the settlement moved further west, along the valley watered by the Kefalovryso.⁹

Kythrea was not a single village but a string of neighbourhoods spread along the water. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in 1918, describes it as a “collection of villages”. In the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33 it is recorded as a town with the quarters of Upper and Lower Chrysida, Agios Andronikos, Syrkania and Chardakiotissa.¹⁰ In the 20th century it had six parishes, each with its own church: the two “upper parishes”, Syrkania, where the spring rose, and Chardakiotissa, and the four “lower” ones, Agios Georgios, Agios Andronikos, Agia Marina and Chrysida.¹¹

Chrysida, to the south, was originally a separate village, already recorded in the 15th century as “casal Chrussida”. When the municipality was founded in 1915 it was included within the municipal boundaries and became the sixth parish of Kythrea, although the censuses recorded it separately until 1931.¹²

Archaeological sites

The ruins of Chytroi spread east of Kythrea. The acropolis stood on the hill of Katsourkas, to the north, and the lower town around the church of Agios Dimitrianos, while a large necropolis extended to the south and south-east. No city walls have been found, and the city was never systematically excavated.¹³ The site and ruins of the ancient city at Agios Dimitrianos are a scheduled Ancient Monument, as is a house of traditional architecture in the town.

The land of Kythrea was inhabited long before the Greeks. In the spring of 1930 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, with the Swedish archaeologist Alfred Westholm in charge of the fieldwork, excavated a pre-Greek settlement east of the new school at Agios Dimitrianos, about 200 metres south of the Kefalovryso, on the bank of a stream. Five circular huts came to light. One of them had burnt down, and beneath the debris of its roof lay, where they had been left, flint tools, grinders and pottery. Among the finds was a seated figurine of green steatite with outstretched arms. In 1954 a second pre-Greek site was located in the same area.¹⁴

In 1883 the German archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter excavated for the Cyprus Museum the sanctuary of the Paphian Aphrodite at Chytroi and a second sanctuary on the hill of Skali. The sanctuary was identified by its inscriptions, written in the Cypriot syllabic script. Stone statuettes and clay figurines were found, among them women playing the tambourine and figures from ring dances.¹⁵ Twenty-seven objects from Chytroi, mostly figurines and sculpture, are today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.¹⁶

In 1909 Eustathios Constantinides, on behalf of the Museum Committee, opened 23 tombs of various periods in a necropolis near Kythrea. He kept neither a day book nor an inventory, however, and the results were never published.¹⁷

In 1928 a farmer found in the area of Agios Dimitrianos, broken into pieces, a bronze statue of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus, larger than life. It was reassembled and is displayed in the Cyprus Museum, in a room of its own. It is the only large bronze statue found in Cyprus.¹⁸

In 1954, during building work near the police station, a tomb revealed a cemetery of the Geometric ancient Greek period, with pottery that included three duck-shaped vases. In the hills north of Kythrea, vessels spoiled in firing and clay figurines of the 7th century BC led archaeologists to suggest that a pottery workshop had worked there.¹⁹ At Sgaftos, on the south-western edge of the town beside the Nicosia road, the Department of Antiquities excavated in 1954 and 1962, with the Cypriot archaeologist Kyriakos Nicolaou, tombs of a cemetery of the same period, of the 9th century BC. One held nearly 125 vases and a skeleton with two bronze brooches on the shoulder, and another an iron spearhead.²⁰

After the invasion, in 1995–1997, the occupation regime carried out, without authority, a surface survey of pre-Greek sites in the area, among them a site on the land of Kythrea.²¹

Antiquity

In the ancient Greek period Chytroi was one of the kingdoms of Cyprus, with Pylagoras of the Assyrian prism as its king in the 7th century BC. Stephanus preserves from a lost writer on Cyprus, Alexander, that “the king of the Chytrians married Eurynoe”. Later Chytroi no longer appears as a kingdom, and the city most probably became part of the kingdom of Salamis.²² From these centuries come the Geometric cemeteries of the town and the sanctuary of Aphrodite.

From Kythrea come dedications to the Paphian goddess, written in Greek in the Cypriot syllabic script, which Sakellarios published in 1890. In one of them the offering speaks, as ancient Greek inscriptions often do, in the first person:²³

Πρωτοτίμω ἠμί, τᾶς Παφίας τῶ ἰερῆϜος, κὰς κατέθηκε τᾶι Παφίαι Ἀφροδίται.

“I belong to Prototimos, the priest of the Paphian, and he dedicated me to the Paphian Aphrodite.”

In another, the offering says that it belongs “to the goddess, the Paphian”, and that Onasithemis dedicated it.

Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period

In the Ptolemaic period Chytroi was a flourishing Greek city. The great inscription of Delphi, of about 230 BC, which records with which citizens of each Greek city the sacred envoys of Apollo’s oracle were lodged, lists Chytroi among the cities of Cyprus.²⁴ Inscriptions show that in the 2nd century BC the city had a gymnasium, that is, the place where the young men of every Greek city trained and were educated, and sanctuaries of Artemis, Hermes and Herakles.²⁵

In a large rock-cut tomb of the period, with twelve burial niches, members of three families of Chytroi were buried, and their inscriptions preserve their names. One of them is the only inscription that mentions a Cypriot philosopher, a follower of Epicurus:²⁶

Πύθων Ἀριστοκράτου ἀδελφὸς Σκυθίνου φιλόσοφος ἐπικούρειος

“Python, son of Aristokrates, brother of Skythinos, Epicurean philosopher.”

Roman period

The water of the Kefalovryso reached Salamis through an aqueduct about 56 kilometres long, parts of which survived into the 20th century.²⁷ Bustron, who saw its remains in the 16th century, writes that Salamis had brackish water and that the aqueduct from Chitria was built for this reason, and that its remains and arches were “a very proud thing” to see.²⁸ The aqueduct most probably dates from the Roman period.²⁹ From these years also comes the bronze statue of Septimius Severus, of the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

In the early medieval Greek period Chytroi became the seat of a bishop. The first known bishop, Pappos, was already old in 367, when Saint Epiphanios was elected archbishop of Salamis. The disciple and biographer of Epiphanios writes that Pappos had been ordained “ἐν πόλει οἰκτρᾷ Κυθρίᾳ καλουμένῃ”, that is, “in a poor city called Kythria”, and that he held the see for fifty-eight years.³⁰ Bishop Photeinos was represented by his deacon Dionysios at the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451, and Bishop Spyridon signed the acts of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 787.³¹

In the medieval Greek period of the Arab raids the see had its own monastery, of Saint Antony, on the mountain. There Demetrianos, born in the 9th century in the village of Sykai in the diocese of Chytroi, lived as a monk for forty years. Bishop Eustathios ordained him priest and made him steward of the diocese, and when Eustathios was elected archbishop, Demetrianos succeeded him on the throne of Chytroi against his will. In the last of the twenty-five years of his episcopate the Arabs invaded the island, plundered Chytroi and carried off many of its inhabitants as captives. Demetrianos, although very old, followed his people as far as Baghdad and obtained their release from the caliph. His story is preserved in his Life, which the Belgian historian Henri Grégoire discovered at Sinai in 1906 and connects with the Arab raid of 911/12. The Church honours Demetrianos as a saint.³² After this plundering the ancient city was abandoned.³³

The area also had hermits. Machairas writes that Saint Epiphanios lived as an ascetic “towards Kythria”, and that by his time the place had become deserted, and the saint’s head and icons had been taken for safekeeping to the monastery of Koutsovendis. His name survives in the place names Agios Epifanios and Kremmoi tou Ai Pifani, north-west of the town.³⁴ According to the Municipality of Kythrea, a rock-cut hermitage, the Agiospilios, was located at Fylleri, north-west of Kythrea.³⁵

The aqueduct of Salamis was repaired from time to time and remained in use. The English traveller Richard Pococke saw in 1738, on one of its arches, a Greek inscription that mentioned a bishop.³⁶

Frankish and Venetian rule

During Frankish rule the mills of Kythrea belonged to the king. In 1220 Queen Alice granted the Latin archbishop of Nicosia the right to grind free of charge at her mills at Kythrea the grain of his household. Already from 1196 the Latin archbishopric collected the tithe of the area.³⁷ In 1222 the Greek bishopric of Chytroi was abolished.³⁸

The mills ground the wheat of Nicosia, and for this reason they became targets in wars. In 1232 the Lombard soldiers of the German emperor Frederick II, in their war with the Ibelins, came to Chitria and destroyed all the mills.³⁹ The Kythriotes themselves fought in the wars of the kingdom. Machairas names among the dead of a battle with the Saracens at Salines, in 1425, Tzakos the Kythriotis, a craftsman and public crier.⁴⁰

The names of the inhabitants preserved in the documents of the time are also Greek. A royal decree of 1468 exempts from the salt tax four francomati, that is, free peasants, of Kythrea, Giorgis Pantalas, Dimitris tou Thoma, Korakas and Stefanos tou Chalili, who served in the royal hunts.⁴¹

In the war of James II with his sister, Queen Charlotte, James’s supporters plundered Chrysida in 1461, the fief of Giulian d’Acre, and took much gold from it.⁴² In the 1460s, once on the throne, James also distributed the revenues of Kythrea: he gave the gardens of Chitria to the constable, that is, the commander-in-chief of the kingdom, Sor de Naves, one mill to Stefano da Sio and two mills to Simon Strambali. In 1473 Queen Caterina Cornaro took from Giacomo Maltese, as a traitor, two small settlements of Chitria and gave them to Antonio Peres.⁴³

During Venetian rule Bustron ranks the spring of Chitria first among the important springs of the island. It yields so much water, he writes, that it waters the land of twelve villages in winter and summer, and right at the source it can turn four mills.⁴⁴ The 16th-century Cypriot historian Stefano Lusignano speaks of the beautiful gardens of “Chitria” and of its copious spring, divided into two branches, which drove many flour mills and watered the cotton fields.⁴⁵

Turkish rule

During Turkish rule Kythrea was the seat of one of the seventeen administrative districts, the kazas, of the island, as the 18th-century Cypriot historian Archimandrite Kyprianos records.⁴⁶ In a report on the trade of Cyprus of 1788, the consul M. de Vezin notes that the district of Kythrea produced fine white silk and some oil and had 32 water mills.⁴⁷

Whoever held the mills of Kythrea could leave Nicosia without bread. Kyprianos relates that around 1680, when Mehmed Agha Boyajioglu rebelled and shut himself up in Nicosia, the pasha sent against him marched straight to Kythrea to take the mills and stayed there two months, until the city was left without bread. The same was done in 1765 by three hundred Turks of the Mesaoria and Famagusta who refused to pay their share of a tax: they gathered at Kythrea and seized the water mills that ground for Nicosia.⁴⁸

The Spanish traveller Domingo Badía, known as Ali Bey, who passed through Kythrea in 1806, describes the spring rising in five places at the foot of the mountain, the mills that supplied Nicosia with flour, the vegetable gardens and the dense plantations of mulberry trees for silkworms. The inhabitants, he notes, believed that the water came under the sea from the mountains of Karamania, that is, the opposite coast of Asia Minor.⁴⁹

In the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Kythrea is recorded as a town, the seat of the subdistrict (nahiye) of Kythrea, of mixed population, with 225 property-holding households. The largest share of the property lay in Chardakiotissa and Agios Andronikos. The owners held mostly gardens and about 2,660 olive trees, while their most valuable property was their shares in the running water. The survey also records 21 mills.⁵⁰

In upper Kythrea, around the spring, Maronites had also lived in earlier times. Mas Latrie notes that Maronite priests still came, in 1879, to celebrate the liturgy in a church of Saint Antony near the ruins of the hamlet of Kefalovryso.⁵¹

According to the Municipality of Kythrea, the notables of Kythrea Chatziionas and Chatziattalas were put to death in the massacres of July 1821. The Kythrean Chatzipetrakis, one of the wealthiest landowners of Cyprus, escaped to Europe and signed the proclamation of the Cypriot fugitives of December 1821, which denounced the massacres.⁵²

In the mid-19th century, according to Sakellarios, the inhabitants watered their gardens with the abundant water and sold their fruit and cabbages in Nicosia, Larnaca and the surrounding villages, while the water mills ground wheat all year round.⁵³

British rule

During British rule the water mills declined. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in the First World War and the years just after it they worked almost without pause, and Kythrea became the most important centre of flour milling in Cyprus. From the mid-1920s, however, imported flour and engine-driven mills began to displace them, and by the end of the Second World War nearly all of them had gone out of use.⁵⁴ In 1956 the British administration, despite the objections of the Kythreans, diverted part of the spring’s water to supply thirteen villages of the Mesaoria.⁵⁵

The Kythreans supported the struggles of the Greek nation. According to the Municipality of Kythrea, volunteers from Kythrea fought in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, while 250 inhabitants gave 190 pounds to the Hellenic Red Cross.⁵⁶

Churches and monasteries

Each of the six parishes had its own church. The largest was Panagia Chardakiotissa, built from 1878 by the voluntary labour of the parishioners, next to the old church of the same name, and dated by the 2009 list to 1894. The new church kept the icon of the Virgin with its silver-gilt cover of 1814.⁵⁷

Agia Marina was built, according to its inscription, in 1734 at the expense of Iosif, his wife Maroudia and Giannakis Papachristodoulou, and was painted in 1735 by the hieromonk Ioannikios. Its carved wooden iconostasis bore the date 1634. Its feast on 17 July was celebrated with a great fair.⁵⁸ The church of Saints Andronikos and Athanasia (17th–19th century), in the parish of the same name, had wall paintings of the early 18th century.⁵⁹ The other parish churches were Agios Georgios o Stratilatis (19th–20th century), the new church of Agia Anna in Syrkania, which replaced the old one, abandoned because of landslides in the 1890s, and Timios Stavros of Chrysida (14th–16th century, restored in 1836).⁶⁰

At the south-western edge of the town stands the monastery of Panagia Theotokos (16th–18th century). According to an inscription, its carved and gilded iconostasis was made in 1771 at the urging of Archbishop Chrysanthos.⁶¹ On the mountain north of Kythrea, in the forest that took its name, stands the ruined monastery of Panagia Plataniotissa (12th–16th century). The church and monastery are a scheduled Ancient Monument.⁶²

On the archaeological site of Chytroi stands the ruined church of Agios Dimitrianos, with a large sarcophagus that, according to tradition, held the body of the saint.⁶³ To the north-west, where Saint Epifanios lived as an ascetic, lie the ruins of Agios Epifanios (19th–20th century). The town also had the chapels of the Archangel, Agios Georgios o Potamitis, Agios Georgios tous Mantides, Agios Georgios at Fylleri, Agios Vasileios, Panagia Karka and Apostle Luke at Chrysida.⁶⁴ According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, until 1919 almost every parish had its own cemetery; the government then closed them all as a danger to public health, and the cadastral plans of 1922 show only two, one on a hill in Syrkania and one west of Agios Georgios, which became the town’s main cemetery.⁶⁵

Economy and society

Kythrea lived from its water. Before 1974 it grew mainly citrus fruit, lemons and oranges, vegetables, olives and carobs.⁶⁶ The women of Kythrea raised silkworms and wove silks and other textiles on the household loom, for their dowries and for sale. The town was also known for its woodcarving and for its lime, considered the best in Cyprus, from the kilns in the surrounding hills.⁶⁷ The Kythraia Cooperative Savings Bank was founded in 1937 and the Kythraia Cooperative Grocery in 1947. According to the Municipality, Kythrea had the reputation of a “mother of teachers”, because it produced hundreds of teachers, men of letters and professionals.⁶⁸

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1856 a private school taught the “common letters” in Kythrea, and in 1860 the Kythrean Chatzichristoforos Chatzipetris, who had studied in Jerusalem, founded a private school of the mutual-teaching method. In 1868 the church of Agios Andronikos built a mutual-teaching school within its precinct, and Agia Marina a girls’ school within its own, whose first teacher was Polyxeni Papazacharia, a graduate of the Phaneromeni Girls’ School. In the same year a boys’ school was also built in Chardakiotissa.⁶⁹ In the mid-19th century Sakellarios records two Greek primary schools in Kythrea, for boys and for girls.⁷⁰ At the beginning of British rule the first British director of education, Josiah Spencer, wrote that at the school of Chardakiotissa he heard pupils read and explain Xenophon’s “Education of Cyrus”.⁷¹

In the school year 1973–74 Kythrea had three Greek primary schools: the school of the lower parishes, at Agios Andronikos, with 190 pupils and 6 teachers, the school of Chardakiotissa, for the upper parishes, with 106 pupils and 4 teachers, and the school of Chrysida, with 22 pupils and one teacher. In 1969 the Kythrea Gymnasium was founded, attended also by children from Voni, Neo Chorio, Trachoni, Palaikythro and Exo Metochi. According to the Municipality of Kythrea, in its last year it had 341 pupils and 22 teachers.⁷²

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Kythrea had 1,630 inhabitants in 1881, 1,653 in 1891, 1,856 in 1901, 2,125 in 1911 and 2,264 in 1921.⁷³ In 1931 Kythrea had 2,362 inhabitants, 2,345 Christians and 17 Muslims, and Chrysida, still recorded separately, 215 Christians. In 1946 the town, together with Chrysida, had 2,818 inhabitants, 2,807 Orthodox and 11 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). The largest parish was Agia Marina, with 686 inhabitants, followed by Agios Andronikos with 646, Chardakiotissa with 470, Syrkania with 407, Agios Georgios with 378 and Chrysida with 231. In 1960 Kythrea had 2,955 inhabitants, 2,951 Greeks and 4 Turks, and in 1973 2,947 Greeks.

Municipality

The founding of the municipality was bound up with the water. The Kefalovryso was crystal clear at the source, but by the time it reached the lower parishes the water of the channels had turned muddy, and housewives filled their jars at dawn and left them to settle. Around 1910 the Kythrean Kostas Milidis, settled in Egypt, donated 300 pounds to bring drinking water by pipe from the spring. A municipal authority was needed to carry out the work, but the owners of the mills and of the water rights objected, fearing that their water would diminish. The municipality was finally founded in 1915, with Nikolaos Kattamis as its first mayor, and the town hall stood on the boundary of the parishes of Agios Andronikos and Agios Georgios.⁷⁴ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the first piping of drinking water was carried out in 1932, when a small dam was also built to measure the water of the spring.⁷⁵ Since the invasion the Municipality of Kythrea has had its temporary offices in Nicosia, within the walls, near the Famagusta Gate.⁷⁶

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 1,786 inhabitants signed in the six parishes of the town, Agios Andronikos, Agios Georgios, Agia Marina, Syrkania, Chardakiotissa and Chrysida, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants.

The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 85 Greek inhabitants of the town who took part in or supported the Struggle. The EOKA fighter Spyros Chatzigiakoumis came from Kythrea.⁷⁷

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Kythrea was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. The European Commission of Human Rights recorded that those who had remained in the villages, especially in the Kythrea area, were taken from their homes and held in confinement, the men in churches and the women in schools and houses, under guard. An inhabitant of Kythrea testified that he was taken from his house and held for three days at Marathovouno, a month at Vitsada and three months at Gypsou.⁷⁸ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Forty-seven Kythreans, 32 of them civilians and 15 soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of 21 have been located and identified, while 26 are still missing. Nineteen disappeared inside Kythrea, one more at the Kythrea police station and 27 elsewhere: at Voni, at the Pavlides garage in Nicosia, at Keryneia, in the Tziaous area, at Assia, at Mia Milia and elsewhere. Six more Kythreans, three civilians and three soldiers, were killed elsewhere: two at Voni and one in its area, two in the Tziaous area and one in the Elia area. Within the land of Kythrea, together with Chrysida, 19 people were killed, 2 soldiers and 17 civilians.

The occupation authorities illegally converted Panagia Chardakiotissa and the new church of Agia Anna into mosques, Agia Marina into a cultural centre and Timios Stavros of Chrysida into a handicraft centre. Agios Georgios o Stratilatis lies inside a military camp and is used as a storehouse. The chapel of Apostle Luke at Chrysida was looted, desecrated and is also used as a storehouse. Agios Georgios at Fylleri and Agios Andronikos, whose roof collapsed, were also looted and desecrated; in 2019 the church was repaired by the bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, after efforts by the Municipality.⁷⁹ The monastery of the Theotokos, inside a military zone, is today in ruins. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, its icons, among them two works of 1680 by the Cretan painter Emmanuel Tzanes, disappeared after the invasion.⁸⁰ According to the Municipality of Kythrea, three icons of Agia Anna and five of Agia Marina were found in Munich in 1997 and repatriated after court proceedings, while the cemetery beside Agios Georgios was desecrated and its graves dug up.⁸¹

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, after the invasion a large quarry was opened on the mountain above the spring, which destroyed the remains of the Plataniotissa monastery and a large part of its forest. The blasting seems also to have destroyed the underground channels of the water, and the Kefalovryso, which gave life to Kythrea for thousands of years, has dried up and flows only in winter, after rain.⁸²