Kythrea Village

Kythrea Village Cyprus Usefull Information

The key to beauty in Mediterranean countries tends to be the presence of water, and, due to its situation on both sides of a river, Kythrea is a pretty place or, in actual fact, four pretty villages linked into one. The houses straggle up the lower slope of the North Cyprus Kyrenia range almost as far as the river's source at Kephalovryso Spring. They are set in luxuriant gardens of fruit trees and flowers, and fields of cauliflower, a vegetable which originated here and was introduced to Europe in 1604. This is one of the localities where travellers might well make some excuse for halting, even when reason argues that it is too early for coffee or drinks and there is more to be seen elsewhere.

Kythrea cannot be considered separately from the water supply which has been responsible for so much of its development. Some inhabitants believe that this flows under the sea bed from Asia Minor. A legendary old woman who had migrated from Anatolia is said to have recognized a silver vessel which she lost in a stream near her old home, and which now came floating into her hands. Whatever the geological possibilities of such a phenomenon, it is a fact that water from Kythrea was channelled across the island to the city of Constantia, the successor of Salamis, where remains of the aqueduct are still in evidence. And because Nicosia was in later days dependent upon the flour which was ground by Kythrea water power (some of the mills are still in use), it became part of strategy in local wars for attackers of the capital to take Kythrea and its mills first, before laying siege to the great city.

The name Kythrea has developed from Chytri, as the settlement was called in the twelfth century B.C. when it was colonized by Greeks under Chytros, grandson of the Athenian, Akamas. In A.D. 806 marauding Saracens captured the entire population with their valuables and movable stock, and transported them in bondage to Syria, whence they were eventually repatriated through the intercession of their bishop, later to be canonized as St Dimitrianos. Near the ruined Church of St Dimitrianos there is a large carved sarcophagus thought to have contained his body. An acropolis and traces of the sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia were excavated by Dr O. Richter in 1883, and about the same time a necropolis of the Bronze Age came to light near the spring-head. But the most important finds in the vicinity have been in the near by village of Voni. The site of a Bronze Age temple on the north side of the village was ransacked in 1883, and the archaeological finds dispersed. It was here, also, that the statue of Septimus Severus (now in the Cyprus Museum), a fine statue of Apollo and other pre-Roman objects were found. The situation is delightful, but what is left on the scattered sites is of minor importance. Out of Kythrea follow the roughly surfaced side road which climbs up towards the mountains past the Kephalovryso Spring, and joins the Forest Road near Halevka.

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