Pyrga is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos (Famagusta). It lies 21 kilometres west of Ammochostos, at an altitude of 30 metres, on the plain of the Mesaoria, near Prastio and beside the new Nicosia–Ammochostos road.¹ At the 1960 census it had 449 inhabitants, all Greeks.

Name

The official Gazetteer of Cyprus writes the village as a feminine singular, “Pyrga, i”, while the names of its school and cooperative use the plural, “ton Pyrgon” (“of the Pyrga”).²

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Pyrga is recorded as a Muslim village, with only five property-holding households. They had cotton fields, a few other fields and barren land, 111 olive trees, 340 sheep, a few oxen and cows, horses and a mule.³

According to one version recorded by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, it was in the area of Pyrga that Turkish troops caught the monk Ioannikios, leader of the 1833 revolt in the Karpasia, as he was making for Larnaka.⁴

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of Pyrga is dedicated to the Archangel Michael and dates from the 18th–19th century. On the village land there are also the chapels of Timios Prodromos and Agios Savvas and, outside the village towards Sinta, the 20th-century chapel of Panagia tis Apalestras, which survives today in ruins.⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 cereal growing dominated at Pyrga.⁶ According to the 2019 government publication on the displaced municipalities and communities, the inhabitants were mainly farmers and stock-raisers, while quite a few travelled every day on the village buses to Ammochostos and Nicosia, where they worked as employees.⁷ The Pyrga Cooperative Credit Society was founded in 1945.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school of Pyrga had 58 pupils and two teachers.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Pyrga had 347 inhabitants in 1881, 317 in 1891, 334 in 1901, 390 in 1911 and 417 in 1921.⁸ In 1931 it had 444 inhabitants, 443 Christians and one Muslim, and in 1946 474, of whom 470 were Orthodox and four Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 449 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 448 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 301 inhabitants of Pyrga signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters records 11 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle. According to the biography published by the EOKA Liberation Struggle Foundation, the fighter Christos Samaras of Liopetri was also active at Pyrga.⁹

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Pyrga was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Two inhabitants of Pyrga, one civilian and one soldier, were recorded as missing. One disappeared in the village itself and the other in the area of Aspri Moutti and Sychari. The remains of one have been located and identified, while the other is still missing. One dead of 1974 is recorded in the village itself, a soldier.

According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the occupation authorities illegally turned the whole village into a military camp, and the church and the cemetery cannot be visited.¹⁰ The 2009 list records the church of the Archangel Michael as looted and desecrated, inside the camp.