Voni is a Greek community of the occupied district of Lefkosia. It lies 13 kilometres north-east of Lefkosia, at an altitude of 110 metres, in the geographical region of the Mesaoria, a little south of Kythrea. Its fields were watered by the Kefalovrysos spring of Kythrea, and on its land a sanctuary of Apollo was excavated in 1883. In the 1960 census it had 479 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known. In Italian and French sources of the 15th and 16th centuries the village is written “Voni” and “Vony”. The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) also records under the same name the stream that passes through the village’s land.¹

Founding and first records

Voni first appears in a written source in the chronicle of the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas, who mentions its inhabitants, the «Βωνιάτες» (men of Voni), in events of 1373. In the 16th century the Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron counts it among the twelve villages watered by the Kefalovrysos of Kythrea: the water came down from Kythrea and Chrysida to Trachoni and the villages of the plain, and from Voni continued towards Palaikythro.²

Archaeological sites

At the western edge of the village stood a sanctuary of Apollo, near ancient Chytroi. It was excavated in 1883, for the Cyprus Museum, by the German archaeologist Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, together with Hugh Sinclair. The excavators drew the sacred enclosure: a long narrow building with a court for sacrifices, a larger open court, statue bases and two basins for purification. Statues and inscriptions had been reused in the foundations of the walls, and the rebuildings date from the last years of the Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) period.³

Many votive statues were found, mainly male figures in stone, among them one larger than life size, which is displayed in the Cyprus Museum. Inscriptions dedicated to Artemis and Apollo, and three inscribed bases with the Greek names of the dedicators, Karys son of Karys and Nikodemos son of Karys, show that the sanctuary was Apollo’s. The same excavation also investigated tombs of the Roman and the medieval Greek periods near the village.⁴ At the beginning of the 20th century the British architect George Jeffery notes that the inhabitants still pointed out large stones of the enclosure, and that one or two statues from the sanctuary had ended up in the courtyard of the village church.⁵

Frankish rule

In December 1373, when the Genoese held Lefkosia, Machairas writes that the villagers of Trachonas and Symintirio, together with the men of Voni, rose up, drove out the Genoese and chased them through the town as far as the royal court.⁶

In the 1460s King James II gave Voni as a fief to Galeazzo de Villaraut, together with four other villages, among them Astromeritis and Kalavasos.⁷ Francomati, that is free peasants, also lived at Voni at that time. In August 1468 James exempted from the salt tax a group of francomati who served the court as huntsmen, most of them from Voni. Their names, which the decree writes in Latin letters, are Greek: Nikolas Ovouvalis, Michalis tou Gia, Drakos o Kouvrelis, Giorgis Kolios, Giorgis o Koutalopoulos and others, ten in all from Voni.⁸

Venetian rule

At the end of the 15th century Voni was a royal village, that is it belonged directly to the state. In a Venetian memorandum published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, the “Casal Voni” is recorded among the fifteen villages of the bailiwick of Palaikythro, the administrative district to which it belonged.⁹

Turkish rule

In the land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Voni is recorded as a mixed village, of Christians and Muslims, with 55 households with property, more than neighbouring Neo Chorio. They had mainly wheat fields and orchards, shares in the running water, a cotton field and 247 olive trees. Among their animals were some 265 sheep and goats, 11 oxen and 21 camels.¹⁰

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village is dedicated to Saint George, and the 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus dates it to the 19th–20th century. According to Jeffery, it was built around 1900 and pieces of the older church were incorporated in its walls, as were the remains of an old iconostasis; it had an icon of 1687.¹¹

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and olives, and to a lesser extent vegetables and citrus. Part of the land was irrigated from the Kefalovrysos, by a channel that passed through the centre of the village, and the inhabitants had old rights to its water. In 1973 the village had some 280 sheep, 260 goats and a few cows, and it was one of the few villages where camels were still kept, as already in the 1832/33 survey. The same encyclopaedia notes that Voni was known for its broad beans and its hens, and that many inhabitants worked in Lefkosia.¹² In 1955 the Voni Co-operative Grocery was founded, and in 1960 the New Co-operative Credit Society of Voni.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Voni had 49 pupils and 2 teachers. According to the Municipality of Kythrea, from 1969 the children of the village attended the Kythrea Gymnasium.¹³

Population

The population of Voni grew slowly. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 367 inhabitants in 1881, 358 in 1891, 343 in 1901, 372 in 1911 and 363 in 1921.¹⁴ In 1931 the village had 368 inhabitants, 367 Christians and one Muslim, and in 1946 460, all Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 479 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 508 Greeks.

National struggles

The Register of EOKA Fighters records 2 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

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

After the capture the Turkish army made Voni one of the main detention centres where it gathered the Greeks who had remained in the villages of the area, mainly around Kythrea. The men were held in the church, the women and children in the school and in houses, under guard, and they were not allowed to go out. A report of the UN Secretary-General of 18 September 1974 mentioned 800 people at Voni. In November 1974, after an agreement between the two sides, the detainees were moved to the free areas. Written statements submitted to the European Commission of Human Rights describe beatings and rapes of detainees. The Commission found, by 13 votes to one, that the confinement of more than two thousand Greeks in schools and churches at Voni, Gypsou and Morfou, imputable to Turkey, was a deprivation of liberty in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.¹⁵

Fourteen inhabitants of Voni, 10 civilians and 4 soldiers, were recorded as missing. Nine were lost at Voni itself, 2 at Palaikythro, 2 at Kornokipos and one in the Koutsoventis area. The remains of 11 have been located and identified; the other 3 are still missing. In the village and its area 20 civilians were killed in 1974: 16 at Voni and 4 in its area.

The 2009 list records the church of Agios Georgios as looted and desecrated. It lies inside a military camp, to which access is not permitted.