Marathovounos is a large Greek community in the occupied part of the Famagusta (Ammochostos) district. It lies 31 kilometres west of Famagusta, at an altitude of 70 metres, in the Mesaoria plain. The British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, describes it in 1918 as an imposing village built on a hill, a little way from the railway line.¹ At the 1960 census it had 2,020 inhabitants, of whom 2,019 were Greeks.

Founding and first records

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Marathovounos is not mentioned in the medieval sources.² In the Ottoman property survey of 1832/33 it is already one of the large Christian villages of the Mesaoria (see Turkish rule).

Archaeological sites

North of the village, at the site of Petrera, lie the ruins of a basilica of the early Greek medieval period, which is an Ancient Monument. It was excavated in 1962 for the Department of Antiquities by the archaeologist Athanasios Papageorghiou, after architectural pieces were found on the surface. The church had three aisles, measured 21 by 14 metres, and had a narthex to the west and an apse to the east; piers and columns separated the aisles. Architectural pieces, carved chancel-screen slabs and fragments of stone window grilles were found, and the basilica seems to have been repaired twice before it was completely destroyed. Scholars date it from the 5th–6th to the 7th–8th century. A smaller three-aisled building, 25 metres to the south-east, was perhaps its baptistery.³

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

The basilica of Petrera, with its possible baptistery, shows that in the early Greek medieval period there was a Christian community on the land of the village with a substantial church, which twice had to be rebuilt. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, a farming settlement lay around the basilica.⁴

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Marathovounos belonged to the district of the Mesaoria and is recorded as a Christian village, with 70 households with property. The land was mostly fields, among them many cotton fields and grain fields, with two gardens and hardly any trees. The villagers had about 2,500 sheep and more than fifty oxen and cows.⁵

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village is dedicated to the Prophet Elijah (Profitis Ilias); Jeffery notes it in 1918 as a large, recently built church.⁶ The chapel of Agios Spyridon dates from the 18th century. There are also the chapels of Agios Georgios and of the Holy Cross (Timios Stavros).

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the villagers grew cereals and fodder crops, and stock-breeding was highly developed. From 1905 there was a police station in the village, and later other services for the surrounding area. The painter Christoforos Savva came from Marathovounos.⁷ In 1926 the Marathovounos Cooperative Credit Society was founded and in 1936 the Cooperative Grocery.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the first school of the village operated from 1869, with teachers from Larnaca who had graduated from its Scholarcheion.⁸ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 330 pupils and ten teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Marathovounos had 777 inhabitants in 1881, 884 in 1891, 1,047 in 1901, 1,291 in 1911 and 1,480 in 1921.⁹ In 1931 it had 1,607 inhabitants, 1,602 Christians and five Muslims, and in 1946 1,788, all Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 2,020 inhabitants, 2,019 Greeks and one other, and in 1973 2,363 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece (Enosis), 1,096 inhabitants of Marathovounos signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 38 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle. The EOKA fighters Michail Georgallas and Kostas Loizou came from Marathovounos. In 1958 the fighter Ilias Papakyriakou of Lythragkomi organised a civil guard in the villages of the Vitsada–Marathovounos area.¹⁰

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Marathovounos was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. After the occupation the Turkish army made Marathovounos one of the centres where it held Greek civilians in confinement, including people from the surrounding villages. A report of the UN Secretary-General of 18 September 1974 mentioned 400 people gathered at Marathovounos. The European Commission of Human Rights found that there was evidence of a detention centre in the village, without being able to determine the conditions fully. The detainees were transferred to Vitsada, 114 of them on 5 October 1974, and some later to Gypsou. The Commission recorded written statements about beatings of detainees at Marathovounos, and a witness stated that many girls were raped there and that he and his family heard their cries.¹¹ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, for some years the village remained a closed area and the Turkish army used it as a camp.¹² Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Seven dead of 1974 are recorded in Marathovounos and its area, all civilians. Fifteen inhabitants of Marathovounos, eight civilians and seven soldiers, were recorded as missing. One went missing in the village itself; the others at Strongylos, where four went missing, at Styllous, in Keryneia and its area, at Dikomo, and in the areas of Lapithos, Mia Milia, Mousoulita–Tziaos, Agios Ermolaos and Aspri Moutti–Syngchari. The remains of seven have been located and identified; eight are still missing. Six more inhabitants of the village, four civilians and two soldiers, were killed elsewhere: two at Vitsada, one in the Famagusta hospital, one at Angastina, one in the area of Agios Ilarion and one in the Athalassa psychiatric hospital.

The 2009 list records the church of the Prophet Elijah as looted and desecrated, with its dome collapsed; the occupation authorities illegally used it as a military store. It lies within a restricted military area.¹³ The chapel of Agios Spyridon was demolished. In the cemetery, north of the village, the grave crosses were torn up and stacked in a heap near the ruins of its chapel, and the larger monuments are damaged.¹⁴