Limnitis is a Turkish community in the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 24 kilometres west of Morfou, at an elevation of 20 metres, in the valley of the river of the same name, near the coast of Tillyria, and administratively it belonged to neighbouring Xerovounos. Opposite it, in the sea, rises the rocky islet of Petra tou Limniti. In the 1960 census it had 323 inhabitants, of whom 8 were Greeks and 315 Turks.

Founding and first records

The Acts of Barnabas, a Greek Christian text of late antiquity, relate that the evangelist Mark and his companions, after the death of the apostle Barnabas at Salamis, came to a kome, that is, a village, which the text calls Limnetes, and there, on the shore, found an Egyptian ship which took them to Alexandria. The Life of St Auxibius also places at a “Limne” the meeting of Mark with Auxibius, the first bishop of Soli. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, both texts refer to Limnitis.¹

Archaeological sites

At the site of Mersineri, west of the mouth of the Limnitis river, there was a small sanctuary, a temenos immediately above a spring. In April 1889 it was explored by the British archaeologist H. Arnold Tubbs for the Cyprus Exploration Fund. The British archaeologist J. L. Myres and the German Max Ohnefalsch-Richter attribute it to Apollo Amyklaios, that is, the Apollo of Amyklai in Laconia. The finds were mostly votive terracottas of local work, a few Greek figurines and vases of the fourth century BC and three small bronze statuettes. The sanctuary had already been plundered, and part of its finds is in museums in Berlin and Cambridge.² According to the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the historic monuments of Cyprus in the early twentieth century, the finds show the influence of Greek models of the fourth century BC.³ A little further east, on the land of Xerovounos, Pleiades tentatively places ancient Limenia.⁴

Frankish rule, Venetian rule

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites research by the historian Nasa Patapiou, Limnitis is recorded as a village in the sources from 1441 to about 1550, and it appears in three Venetian lists of the villages of Cyprus. In 1516 it was bought as a fief by Madalena Lodron, of one of the oldest noble families of Cyprus, and in 1534 by Gabriel Cornaro, of the Cornaro branch of Episkopi, the feudal lord of the surrounding area, who paid 488 ducats for it. By the census of 1565 the village no longer existed, although its land remained fertile.⁵

British rule

According to the same encyclopaedia, Limnitis does not appear in the census of 1881, and the present village was founded anew in the early twentieth century; its inhabitants spoke only Greek until recently.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The village church is dedicated to St George.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 citrus, almond and carob trees were grown on the village’s land, and stock-breeding was limited.⁷

Population

Limnitis was counted separately only in 1960 and 1973. In 1960 it had 323 inhabitants, 8 Greeks and 315 Turks, and in 1973 around 400 Turks (estimate) and no Greeks.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 six soldiers were killed on the land of Limnitis. The 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus records the church of Agios Georgios inside a Turkish military camp.