Ancient Lapithos was a Spartan city-kingdom, then a Roman harbour, then a village of water, silk and lemons on the slope of the Kyrenia mountains. This is a guide to walking through it — and every stop begins at our gate.
A working Cypriot village of under eight thousand people, sitting on a spring line between a mountain and the sea, with an unusual amount of history under it.
| Where | Distance |
|---|---|
| St Luke's church | Across the lane |
| The village centre and the coffee houses | 10 min on foot |
| The Lapta coastal walkway | 2 km |
| Lambousa fish tanks & Acheiropoietos | 4 km |
| Kyrenia (Girne) harbour | 15 km |
| St Hilarion Castle | 20 km |
| Bellapais Abbey | 22 km |
| Nicosia (Lefkoşa) walled city | 40 km |
| Ercan Airport | 55 km |
Approximate road distances, rounded. Ask us before you drive — on this coast the pretty way round is often barely longer than the fast one.
The village has had three names and all three are still in use. Lapithos is the Greek one and the oldest still spoken: Strabo records the city as a Spartan colony founded by a man called Praxandros after the Trojan War, though pottery and potters' wheels put people on this hillside two thousand years before that. Lambousa — the shining one — is what Rome called the harbour city on the headland three kilometres north. Lapta is the name it carries today.
The three names also mark three positions. The Bronze Age settlement and the classical city stood down by the water. When Arab raids emptied the coast in the seventh century, the people carried what they could inland and uphill, to the line where springs come out of the Kyrenia mountains, and they never moved back. A decision taken thirteen centuries ago is why Lapta stands exactly where it does — and why it has water when much of this coast does not.
What the water paid for is still standing. It ran down cut channels between the gardens, turned the mills and fed terraces of mulberry, lemon and olive. Mulberry leaves fed silkworms, and silk paid for stone: the houses, the church towers and the cloister walls of this monastery were all bought with it.
Fourteen moments, from the first potters to the municipality of today. Pick one.
Pottery and potters' wheels found at Alonia ton Plakon, and at a second site to the east, put people on this hillside in the Early Bronze Age — two thousand years before the city that took its name.
This is the order we would walk it. The first five are on foot; the last two need a car for about twenty minutes. Tick them off as you go — the page remembers where you got to.
Start where you are standing. The Old Monastery was built for the monks who looked after this church, and the parish took its name: Ayios Loukas was one of the six old parishes of Lapithos. The church as you see it went up in 1850. The monastery beside it is older.
Climb. The lanes narrow, the houses get older, and the water channels start running along beside your feet. The Esseyid Elhaç Mehmet Ağa mosque was built in 1828, rebuilt between 1887 and 1889, and given its concrete minaret in 1976. From the terraces above it you can see the sea and the mountain in one turn of the head.
The oldest dated church in the village, and another of the six parishes. Two white pillars carved with Byzantine crosses stand in the yard, and part of the gallery is seventeenth-century — older than the building around it, which usually means an earlier church stood on the same ground.
Lapithos was known across Cyprus for its water. It leaves the mountain here, runs down cut channels between the gardens, and once turned the mills and fed terraces of mulberry, lemon and olive. Mulberry leaves fed silkworms; silk paid for the stone. Follow a channel downhill and you are following the whole economy of the old village.
The old coffee houses are still the middle of the village: shade, backgammon, and coffee that arrives without being asked twice. This is also the stage. Every July the Lapta Tourism Festival sets up here for three days and the whole village turns out. The photograph is of Christoforos' kafenion here, taken by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition around 1930 — the chairs have changed, the habit has not.
A level path built along the water's edge, curling round rocks and coves and past a handful of cafés to Sarduya bay, where you can swim. Flat enough for anyone, and behind you the whole way is the wall of the Kyrenia mountains. Go an hour before sunset.
Three tanks cut straight into the rock at the shoreline and joined by channels — the largest is 27 metres by 14 — where Roman and Byzantine fishermen kept fish alive until market day. Behind them the cliff is honeycombed with rock tombs, and the old harbour wall still shows to the west. A few hundred metres inland stands the eleventh-century Acheiropoietos monastery, whose name means made without hands, with the chapel of St Evlalios beside it.
Lambousa was rich for six hundred years and then it was over. The harbour city on the headland was emptied by Arab raids in the seventh century and never rebuilt; what it could not carry inland, it buried.
Two hoards of Byzantine silver came out of that ground — one in 1897 at Lambousa itself, one in 1902 at Karavas next door. The second included nine plates showing the life of King David, struck in Constantinople between 613 and 630 and among the finest secular silver to survive from the early Byzantine world. Within a few years of being found, almost all of it had left the island.
| Hoard | Found | Where the silver is now |
|---|---|---|
| First Cyprus Treasure — the Lambousa Treasure | 1897 | British Museum, London |
| Second Cyprus Treasure — the David Plates | 1902 | Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Cyprus Museum, Nicosia |
Eighteen religious buildings stand in a village of under eight thousand people — the accumulation of Byzantine, Lusignan, Ottoman and British centuries on one hillside. Eleven of them are documented well enough to date.
| Kind | Note | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayios Evlalios | Early Christian | Churches | Foundations still visible, beside the Acheiropoietos monastery |
| Acheiropoietos monastery | 11th c. | Monasteries | Byzantine, on the Lambousa headland. The name means made without hands |
| Timios Prodromos | 17th c. | Churches | Gothic; one of the six old parishes |
| Ayia Anastasia | 18th c. | Monasteries | Church and monastery together; one of the six old parishes |
| Esseyid Elhaç Mehmet Ağa mosque | 1828 | Mosques | Upper Lapta. Rebuilt 1887–89, concrete minaret added 1976 |
| Ayios Theodoros | 1834 | Churches | Byzantine cross pillars in the yard; 17th-century gallery |
| Ayios Minas | 1843 | Churches | One of the six old parishes |
| Ayios Loukas | 1850 | Churches | Across the lane from The Old Monastery |
| Haydar Paşazade Mehmet Bey mosque | 1870 | Mosques | The second of the village's two mosques |
| Ayia Paraskevi | 1892 | Churches | One of the six old parishes |
| Ayios Evlambios | Not recorded | Churches | Chapel near the monastery; no date on record |
Dated from the record. Where a date is not recorded we have left it out rather than guess — and the seven remaining chapels are names that have outlasted their paperwork. Several of these buildings are not in use, and a few stand on land you cannot walk into; ask us before you set off.
Northern Cyprus runs on a calendar of small festivals, most of them named after whatever is ripe. Pick a month and see what is on.
The quietest month and the greenest: the hills turn from brown to green within a fortnight of the first real rain. Cool enough to walk all day.
Lapta had 7,839 residents at the 2011 census, roughly a thousand of them British and German and many of them here permanently. It is administered today as part of the Lapta–Alsancak–Çamlıbel municipality, and it is twinned with Büyükçekmece in Turkey (2007), Kemer on the Antalya coast (2012) and Karpoš in Skopje (2015).
It is a working village rather than a resort. There is a bakery, there are supermarkets and a post office, there are restaurants along the coast road and the old coffee houses up in the middle, and there is a bus. Everything on that list is within walking distance of our gate, which is the main reason people who come here once tend to come back.
The coast road will put you in Kyrenia in about twenty minutes. Diving, riding, hiking in the Pentadaktylos and boat trips can all be arranged from the village — ask us and we will make the call for you.
Eight self-catering holiday homes inside a 120-year-old monastery, in the middle of the village you have just read about. Pick your dates and we will reply personally.
These photographs are of Lapta and Lambousa and are reproduced under the licences shown; they are not always of the exact building described beside them. Every photograph of The Old Monastery itself, throughout the rest of this site, is our own.
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