Vouno is a Greek community of the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 9 kilometres south-east of Keryneia, at an altitude of 340 metres, on the southern slope of the Pentadaktylos, next to Sichari.¹ In the 1960 census it had 424 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

In the sources of the period of Turkish rule the village appears as “Vono” in 1596, as “Vounos” in 1683 and as “Vuna” in 1769. Travellers of the 17th and 18th centuries note that it was also called Agios Romanos, after its church dedicated to that saint.²

Founding and first records

Vouno was not found in the 15th-century lists of fiefs and royal villages. The oldest written mention of it located dates from 1596. In that year the Italian Girolamo Dandini, envoy of Pope Clement VIII to the Maronites of Cyprus, recorded the nineteen villages where Maronites lived, among them “Vono”.³

Turkish rule

Greeks, however, also lived in the village, with their own priest. In 1683 the Dutch traveller Cornelis van Bruyn reached Vouno in the evening, on his way to the abbey of Belapais, and slept in the house of a Greek priest. He notes that the supper was frugal, because the Greek clergy were so poor that they barely had the necessities.⁴ In 1686, according to a publication of the Press and Information Office on the Maronites, Vouno was one of only eight villages of Cyprus where Maronites remained.⁵ The Italian traveller Giovanni Mariti, who wrote about Cyprus in 1769, mentions that the village belonged to the Maronites, who were its main inhabitants.⁶

The land survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33 recorded only those who owned property. At Vouno four households with property are recorded, all Christian. They had wheat fields, an orchard, a threshing floor, 82 olive trees, 13 beehives, 190 goats and two horses.⁷

In the 19th century Vouno is still mentioned among the villages of the Maronites.⁸

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village was dedicated to Saint George and dates from the 18th century and 1830. It stood at the north-east edge of the old centre of the village.⁹ The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus at the beginning of the 20th century, describes it in 1918 as a small, plain single-aisled church that had just been repaired.¹⁰

The church of Agios Romanos, from which the village took its second name, was the church of the Maronites of Vouno. According to the same Press and Information Office publication, it was built in 1518.¹¹ In 1918 Jeffery recorded it as a ruined chapel on the path to the monastery of Agios Ioannis Chrysostomos.¹² It is an Ancient Monument.

The oldest of the village’s chapels is Agios Savvas, of the 12th century, built over four burial chambers, which is now a ruin. The chapel of the Timios Stavros (Holy Cross), of the 17th century, is also in ruins. There was also the chapel of Profitis Ilias, of the 16th century.

Economy and society

The inhabitants combined farming with stock-breeding, as already in the 1832/33 survey. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 they grew cereals, carobs and a few olives, and formerly cotton. In 1973 they kept 422 sheep, 269 goats and 47 oxen, mainly for ploughing. Later many worked in the quarries, and nearby Lefkosia offered work to many inhabitants, which, according to the same encyclopaedia, helped the village to grow steadily.¹³

In 1950 the Sichari–Vouno Co-operative Credit Society was founded, and in 1956 the Sichari–Vouno Co-operative Grocery, shared with the neighbouring village.

Education

According to the Union of Communities of Keryneia District, the elementary school of the village was founded after 1900 with one classroom. Later a second was added, and the children were divided into a boys’ school and a girls’ school.¹⁴ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Vouno had 83 pupils and three teachers.

Population

The population of Vouno grew steadily throughout the 20th century. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 63 inhabitants in 1881, 91 in 1891, 125 in 1901, 150 in 1911 and 211 in 1921.¹⁵ In 1931 it had 237 inhabitants, all Christians, and in 1946 389, of whom 388 were Orthodox (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 424 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 525 Greeks.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 194 inhabitants of Vouno signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters records 6 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Vouno 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.

Two inhabitants of Vouno were recorded as missing. One, a soldier, was lost at Keryneia, and his remains have been identified. The other, a civilian, was lost in Vouno itself and is still missing. Two more inhabitants, one civilian and one soldier, were killed elsewhere, in the area of the village of Paramali and in the area of Agios Pavlos in Lefkosia.

The 2009 list records the church of Agios Georgios as desecrated, looted and seriously damaged, and the chapel of Profitis Ilias as demolished. Agios Georgios was left without maintenance and in March 2025 it collapsed.¹⁶ The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Romanos into a museum. The village cemetery is in ruins, and the crosses of the graves have been gathered onto the remains of the enclosure wall, so that the graves can no longer be located.¹⁷