Lefkosia (Nicosia) is the semi-occupied capital of Cyprus and of the district of the same name. It is built in the middle of the island’s central plain, on the banks of the Pediaios, at an elevation of about 150 metres. The old town is enclosed by the Venetian walls, and in the 20th century new quarters spread outside them, such as Neapolis to the north. In the 1960 census the town, without its suburbs, had 45,629 inhabitants, of whom 25,561 were Greeks and 14,686 Turks.

Name

The ancient city was called Ledra or Ledroi, and the writers who tell of its bishop Triphyllios still use that name in the 4th century. The later name, Leukousia, is given in the 6th century by the Greek geographer Hierokles in his list of the cities of Cyprus. Under Frankish rule the foreign rulers called the city Nicosie, from which comes the Nicosia of the European languages.¹ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the form Lefkosia with omicron first appears in the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas, and the spelling with omega, Λευκωσία, prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Cypriots also called Lefkosia simply “Chora”, the Town.²

Founding and first records

The first written record of the city dates from 673/672 BC. In an inscription of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, the so-called Prism B, Unasagusu, king of Ledra (Lidir), is named among the ten kings of Cyprus.³

The old town within the walls was divided into parishes, or quarters (mahallades). The present occupied part includes, wholly or in part, among others the parishes of Agios Loukas, Agia Sofia and Karamanzade, and part of Agios Kassianos. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Agios Kassianos and Chrysaliniotissa, the so-called Lower Parishes, were among the purely Orthodox quarters of the town and took their names from their churches. In the 20th century the quarter of Neapolis grew up outside the walls, on the road to Trachonas.⁴

Archaeological sites

Ancient Ledra lies beneath the modern city, and its main archaeological sites are in the free southern part. At Agia Paraskevi, a mile south-west of the old town, lies a large Bronze Age cemetery. The German archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter opened about ninety tombs there in 1884–1885, and most of the Cyprus Museum’s Bronze Age collection comes from them.⁵

On the hill of Agios Georgios, where the new House of Representatives was built, the Department of Antiquities excavated from 1996 to 2006 a settlement with eleven parallel roads and pottery and metal workshops. A black-glazed cup of the 4th century BC bears an incised inscription naming an “anax” Timas, that is, a prince. A cloth bag held 36 silver coins struck in Cyprus with legends in the Cypriot Greek syllabic script, in the view of the excavator Despo Pilides the oldest coin hoard found in Cyprus. The latest coins of the settlement are of Cleopatra VII.⁶

In the occupied part of the city, in 2020 the occupation regime carried out, without authority, emergency works with excavation on the foundations of the wall between the Mula and Roccas bastions, where a section had collapsed in heavy rain.⁷

The medieval fortifications of Lefkosia and the area of the medieval town within the walls are listed Ancient Monuments. In the occupied part, the Ancient Monuments also include, among others, the Latin cathedral of Agia Sofia with its Chapter House and the palace of the Latin archbishops, the medieval church of Agia Aikaterini, the medieval church of the Yeni Tzami, the Great Khan and the Gamblers’ Khan.

Antiquity

In the ancient Greek period Ledra was one of the kingdoms of Cyprus, and the settlement on the hill of Agios Georgios lasted into the Ptolemaic period, until the middle of the 1st century BC. The syllabic coins and the inscription of the “anax” Timas show a city that spoke and wrote Greek, like the other kingdoms of the island.⁸

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

In the 4th century Ledra had its own bishop, Triphyllios, a disciple of St Spyridon. The 5th-century Greek church historian Sozomen describes him as a learned man who had studied law at Berytus, and the 4th-century Latin church writer St Jerome calls him the most eloquent man of his time. The Church honours him as a saint.⁹

Anna Komnene, who wrote the history of the reign of her father, the emperor Alexios I, records that when the governor of Cyprus, Rhapsomates, rebelled in 1092, he was at Lefkosia. The general John Doukas, sent against him, took Keryneia, defeated Rhapsomates and then moved on to Lefkosia, where he received the submission of the whole island.¹⁰

Frankish rule

Under Frankish rule Lefkosia was the capital of the kingdom of the foreign rulers and the seat of the Latin archbishop. The Greeks of the city still had their own bishop.¹¹ According to Machairas, the walls of the city were begun by King Henry II (1285–1324). The same chronicler describes the flood of the river of Lefkosia, the Pediaios, on 10 November 1330, which uprooted trees, brought down many houses and drowned a number of inhabitants. In memory of the drowned a procession was held every year on 10 November.¹²

Venetian rule

Under Venetian rule the Orthodox cathedral of the city was the Panagia Odigitria, today’s Bedesten, next to Agia Sofia. In 1567 the Venetians began, to designs by the engineer Giulio Savorgnano, the new walls of the city, with eleven bastions. On the north side they opened the gate “of the Proveditore”, today’s Kyrenia Gate.¹³

The walls were not finished when, at the end of July 1570, the Turkish army arrived before Lefkosia. The engineer Giovanni Sozomeno, who took part in the defence and was taken prisoner, writes that the Turks made fifteen assaults in forty-five days. The last began at dawn on 9 September 1570, on four bastions at once, and the Turks broke into the city through the Podocataro bastion. A massacre followed in the streets and squares until the afternoon. The surviving defenders were taken prisoner.¹⁴

Turkish rule

The Turks took from the Greeks their cathedral, the Panagia Odigitria, which became a covered market, the Bedesten, and later a grain store.¹⁵ In the Ottoman land survey of 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, a convert to Islam, Ismail, is recorded among the property holders of the town.¹⁶

In the parish of Ibrahim Pasha, in today’s occupied part of the town, stood the Venetian palace of government, which became the Serai, the seat of the Turkish administration, and was demolished in 1904.¹⁷ When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, the Turkish governor Kuchuk Mehmed, on the pretext that the Greeks were preparing a revolt, disarmed them, and on 9 July ordered the arrest of Archbishop Kyprianos and the three bishops. They were taken to the Serai, where the janissaries killed them as soon as they were inside. The Greek notables summoned afterwards met the same fate. The bodies were thrown into the square, and a general massacre began.¹⁸

British rule

Under British rule Lefkosia remained the capital of the island. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, its first mayor was Christodoulos Severis (1880–1888), and until 1960 all its mayors but one were Greeks.¹⁹ According to the same source, in 1958, during the EOKA struggle, Greeks living in parts of the town where the Turks were the majority were violently driven out, and Greeks with shops in the commercial centre of the old town were also affected.²⁰

Churches and monasteries

The parish church of Agios Loukas, in the parish of the same name, was built according to the inscription over its entrance in 1758, under Archbishop Philotheos, and its carved wooden iconostasis dates from 1780. It was a parish church until 1958. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, in the 1950s the iconostasis and many icons were burned in a fire set by young Turks.

Two churches of the parish stand in Agios Kassianos. Agios Georgios, of the 16th century, held valuable icons, among them an icon of the martyrdom of the saint of 1719, and an iconostasis of 1812, from the time of Archbishop Kyprianos. Agios Iakovos, of the 16th–18th century, passed in the 17th century to the Capuchins, French Catholic friars. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, a wall painting of the saint was believed to work miracles, and Greeks and Turks brought their children there when they had earache. In 1793 the church was bought by the Greek dragoman Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, and in 1917 his descendants gave it to the Church, which housed an orphanage in its buildings. According to the same source, during the Turkish rebellion of 1963–64 Turks set fire to the church, destroying the iconostasis and all its icons.²¹

Apostolos Andreas, the church of Neapolis, was built in 1950, with two bell towers and a large dome.

The Bedesten, the former Panagia Odigitria, is a listed Ancient Monument. Excavations in the 1930s showed that part of it stands on a small early medieval Greek basilica. The church built on the site in the 14th century was, according to documents of 1507 and 1518, dedicated to the Panagia Odigitria and was the Orthodox cathedral of Lefkosia.

The Armenian church of the Virgin (Sourp Asdvadzadzin), in Karamanzade, is also an Ancient Monument. In the 14th century it was a convent of Latin nuns, and it passed to the Armenians around 1500 or in 1567. In 1571 a sultan’s firman formally returned it to the Armenians, and until the 1960s it was the centre of their religious and cultural life. Near it stood the Greek Orthodox shrine of Agios Fotios, with an icon of 1924 painted by the deacon Panaretos Kousoulides. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, Greeks and Armenians went there to light a candle, and in 1963–64 the icon was moved to the Phaneromeni.²²

Economy and society

Lefkosia was the weaving centre of its district. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the weavers of Agios Kassianos and Chrysaliniotissa wove silk cloths, the taista and the itarades.²³ The traditional commercial centre of the town lay around Agia Sofia and along Ermou and Paphos streets, where the large municipal market also stood.²⁴

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Neapolis had 267 pupils and 10 teachers, and the Neapolis Gymnasium also operated in the quarter. In Agios Kassianos there was a school complex, which now lies inside the buffer zone.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, at the first census of British rule, in 1881, Lefkosia had 11,536 inhabitants. In 1931 it had 23,324 inhabitants, 15,643 Christians and 7,681 Muslims, and in 1946 34,485, of whom 20,768 were Orthodox, 10,330 Muslims and 3,387 others (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1946 the parish of Agios Kassianos had 1,177 inhabitants, 1,061 of them Orthodox, and the parish of Agios Loukas 806, of whom 263 were Orthodox and 536 Muslims.

In 1960 the town had 45,629 inhabitants: 25,561 Greeks, 14,686 Turks, 1,978 British, 1,848 Armenians, 236 Maronites and others. In the 1973 census the Greeks of the town numbered 23,179. These figures refer to the whole town, not only to its present occupied part.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite on union with Greece, 11,663 inhabitants signed in the parishes of the town, among them 1,105 in Agios Kassianos and 654 in Agios Loukas.

The EOKA Fighters’ Register lists 596 Greek inhabitants of the town who took part in or assisted the Struggle. The EOKA fighters Markos Drakos and Iakovos Patatsos came from Lefkosia.²⁵

The Turkish invasion of 1974

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the division of the town began with the Turkish rebellion of December 1963, which started in Lefkosia. From 1964 the line dividing the town, the “Green Line”, was supervised by the United Nations peacekeeping force, and the old commercial centre along Ermou and Paphos streets was largely abandoned.²⁶

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 the Turkish army occupied the northern part of Lefkosia. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the occupied part includes the northern part of the old town up to Ermou and Paphos streets, the whole parish of Ibrahim Pasha and most of the parish of Arab Ahmet, and the buffer zone that followed covered parts of quarters, with churches and schools.²⁷ The Greek inhabitants of the occupied part, among them the inhabitants of Neapolis, were ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return, and the Municipality of Lefkosia cannot exercise its authority in the occupied part of the town.²⁸

Eighty-four people of Lefkosia, 7 civilians and 77 soldiers, were recorded as missing. The remains of 48 have been located and identified, while 36 are still missing. Most disappeared in the district of Keryneia, among them 9 in Keryneia and 8 in the Lapithos area, and others in Lefkosia and its outskirts, in Neapolis, Omorfita and Trachonas. Thirty-three more people of Lefkosia, 26 soldiers and 7 civilians, were killed in other places, among them the areas of Aglantzia, Athalassa and Nicosia airport. In Lefkosia itself 74 dead of 1974 are recorded: 63 soldiers, among them two from Greece, and 11 civilians. Most fell in the area of Agios Pavlos, and others near the Gregorios School, at the Ledra Palace, in Agios Kassianos, at the Central Prisons and on the Green Line.

Agios Georgios in Agios Kassianos was set on fire by the Turks, and Agios Iakovos was looted and vandalised. Agios Iakovos now lies abandoned inside the buffer zone. The occupation authorities illegally converted Apostolos Andreas in Neapolis into a mosque and Agios Loukas into a cultural centre. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the Bedesten, which had come close to collapse, was restored in 2003–2009 under a United Nations Development Programme project funded by the European Union, and the Armenian church was restored in 2008–2013 and used again for worship in 2014, for the first time in fifty years.²⁹

On 19 July 1989 some 1,000 demonstrators, mostly women, entered the buffer zone at Agios Kassianos. They passed the wire barrier and the line of United Nations soldiers and reached the old school complex of the quarter, inside the buffer zone. Shortly afterwards Turkish police and security forces entered the area and arrested 111 people, 101 of them women. The UN Secretary-General called for their immediate release, and the President of the Security Council conveyed the Council’s deep concern. The last two detainees were released on 30 July.³⁰