Loutros is a Greek community in the occupied part of the Lefkosia district. It lies 21 kilometres west of Morfou, at an elevation of 270 metres, in the Tillyria region. On its land, on the hill of Vouni above Morfou Bay, stands the ancient palace of Vouni. In the 1960 census it had 394 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not certain. The village is recorded in the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33.¹

Founding and first records

In the 15th-century lists of fiefs and royal villages preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron and the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, Loutros has not been found, either under its present name or under a similar one. Its first certain written record is in the property survey of 1832/33.

On the village’s land, next to it on the east, there is the place-name “Palion Chorion” (old village).² The land of Loutros was inhabited much earlier, as the palace at Vouni shows.

Archaeological sites

On the summit of the hill of Vouni, north-east of the village, stands a large palace of the ancient Greek period, built around 500 BC. The site was found by chance by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, while it was excavating at neighbouring Soloi, when a workman reported a stone statue built into a dry-stone wall on the mountain. The Expedition, led by the Swedish archaeologist Einar Gjerstad, excavated the entire palace from the spring of 1928 to the autumn of 1929, with the permission of the authorities of Cyprus. Every morning about fifty men and women from the neighbouring villages, Loutros and Galini, worked at the excavation. The Expedition also worked at the site of Korakas, where the cemetery lay, and at the site of Paradeichiotissa, which the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer) records as place-names of Loutros.³

The excavators distinguished four building phases in two successive palaces, with storerooms, a bath and a large central courtyard. At the highest point of the hill they excavated a small temple with three rooms, which Gjerstad considered the first temple of Athena found in Cyprus: four heads of the goddess were found there, bronze reliefs with lions attacking a bull, and stone and terracotta statues. The temple shows that Athena, goddess of the Greeks, was worshipped on the hill. The hill was fortified with a wall, and around the palace there were houses and rock-cut tombs.⁴

The palace was destroyed by fire around 380 BC or a little earlier and was not rebuilt. Under one of its staircases a clay jar was found, covered with ash from the fire, holding three silver vessels, gold and silver bracelets, jewellery and more than 250 coins, most of them from Marion and Kition and others from Pafos, which show the contacts of the place with the other kingdoms of Cyprus. The treasure was taken to the Cyprus Museum. On the character of the palace researchers disagree: Gjerstad considered it a seat of rulers, while more recent researchers suggest that it may have been a Persian fortress.⁵ The palace, the temple and the area around them are an Ancient Monument. The Register of Ancient Monuments calls them the “palace and temple of Aipeia”, that is, it connects them with Aipeia, the city which, according to the Greek biographer of the 1st–2nd century AD Plutarch, King Philokypros moved on the advice of the Athenian lawgiver Solon to the plain below, where it was named Soloi.⁶

Antiquity

In the ancient Greek period the land of Loutros, a few kilometres west of Soloi, most probably belonged to the kingdom of Soloi. The palace and the temple of Athena at Vouni belong to the Archaic ancient Greek and the Classical Greek periods.⁷

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Loutros is recorded as a Christian village of the district of Lefka, with 21 property-holding households. They had mainly fields, a few vineyards and threshing floors, 151 olive trees, a few carob and fig trees, and an olive press. A large part of their property was their animals: 80 goats, oxen and cows.⁸

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of Loutros was dedicated to the Apostle Luke and stood east of the old centre of the village; south of it was the cemetery.⁹ On the village’s land there were also the churches of Agios Nikolaos and Agios Dimitrios, and the chapels of Agios Charalambos and Agios Andronikos.¹⁰

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew citrus fruit, carobs, olives, almonds, vines and some cereals, and stock-breeding was limited: in 1973 80 stock-breeders had 320 sheep, 242 goats and 32 oxen.¹¹ The village had the Loutros Cooperative Credit Society, from 1951, and the Loutros Cooperative Grocery, from 1959.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 143 inhabitants in 1881, 202 in 1891, 242 in 1901, 234 in 1911 and 237 in 1921.¹² In 1946 Loutros had 307 inhabitants, all of them Orthodox (the 1946 census recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 394 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 364 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 49 pupils and two teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 173 inhabitants of Loutros signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 15 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Loutros was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek inhabitants were subjected to ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

The village lies today within a forbidden Turkish military zone, and the 2009 list records all its churches within a Turkish military camp. In satellite images the settlement no longer exists: only a few house foundations can be seen. Of the church of the Apostle Luke and of the cemetery nothing seems to survive.¹³

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1. The 1832/33 Ottoman Property Survey of Cyprus (Harokopio University, Sylvia Ioannou Foundation).↩︎

2. A Complete Gazetteer of Cyprus, vol. 1, p. 938.↩︎

3. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Vouni: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1928–1929)» (accessed 1.11.2026); A Complete Gazetteer of Cyprus, vol. 1, pp. 255, 610, 965.↩︎

4. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Vouni: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1928–1929)» (accessed 1.11.2026).↩︎

5. Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Vouni: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1928–1929)» (accessed 1.11.2026).↩︎

6. Plutarch, Life of Solon 26 (transl. B. Perrin, Loeb 1914, LacusCurtius), p. 26.↩︎

7. Pleiades, «Vouni».↩︎

8. The 1832/33 Ottoman Property Survey of Cyprus (Harokopio University, Sylvia Ioannou Foundation).↩︎

9. Cyprus Religious Heritage, «Loutros».↩︎

10. A Complete Gazetteer of Cyprus, vol. 1, pp. 34, 62, 130.↩︎

11. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Λουτρός».↩︎

12. Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Λουτρός».↩︎

13. Cyprus Religious Heritage, «Loutros».↩︎

Sources (17)

• The 1832/33 Ottoman Property Survey of Cyprus (Harokopio University, Sylvia Ioannou Foundation), Λουτρός (καζάς Λεύκας)
• Florio Bustron, Chronique de l’île de Chypre, ed. R. de Mas Latrie (1886), κατάλογοι φέουδων 1468: ο Λουτρός δεν αναφέρεται
• L. de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous le règne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, vol. 3 (1852–1861), «Villages du domaine royal»: ο Λουτρός δεν αναφέρεται
• A Complete Gazetteer of Cyprus, vol. 1, τ. 1: Λουτρός (σ. 760), Παλιόν Χωριόν (σ. 938), Βουνί (σ. 255), Κόρακας (σ. 610), Παραδειχιώτισσα (σ. 965), Αγία Βαρβάρα (σ. 17), Άγιος Ανδρόνικος (σ. 34), Άγιος Νικόλαος (σ. 62), Απόστολος Λουκάς (σ. 130)
• Ancient Cyprus (ancientcyprus.com), register of excavations and surveys, «Vouni: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1928–1929)» (πρόσβαση 1.11.2026)
• Pleiades, «Vouni» (αρχαϊκή, κλασική περίοδος)
• Plutarch, Life of Solon 26 (transl. B. Perrin, Loeb 1914, LacusCurtius), κεφ. 26 (Φιλόκυπρος, Αίπεια, Σόλοι)
• Department of Antiquities, Register of Ancient Monuments (May 2025), αρ. 1000 (Το ανάκτορο και ο ναός της Αίπειας στο Βουνί, Πίνακας Α)· αρ. 1001 (Ο χώρος και τα κατάλοιπα γύρω από το αρχαίο ανάκτορο, Πίνακας Α και Β)
• Cyprus Religious Heritage, «Loutros»: εκκλησία Αποστόλου Λουκά, κοιμητήριο, κατάσταση του χωριού
• Church of Cyprus, list of churches in the occupied areas (2009)
• Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia (Polignosi), «Λουτρός» (καλλιέργειες, κτηνοτροφία 1973· πληθυσμός 1881–1921)
• Register of Cooperative Societies, 0374/1951, 0018/1959
• State Archives of Cyprus, E19/46 (schools 1973–74), Ελληνικό Δημοτικό Σχολείο Λουτρού
• Statistical Service of Cyprus, censuses, 1946, 1960, 1973
• Ethnarchy of Cyprus, announcement of the Enosis plebiscite results by village, 27.1.1950, «Λουτρός 173»
• Register of EOKA Fighters 1955-1959 (SIMAE, 2004), Λουτρός (15)
• Union of Occupied Communities of Lefkosia District (nicosiaoccupiedcommunities.org), «Λουτρός» (κοινοτικό συμβούλιο)

Links (1)

• Cyprus Religious Heritage, «Loutros»