Tarnassos and Makheras Monastery

Tarnassos and Makheras Monastery Cyprus Usefull Information

Route Leave Nicosia by the suburb of Strovolos (Route D on Nicosia routes map) for Kato Lakatamia (.Tamassossite and Makheras Monastery.). You can get back to Nicosia by continuing through the hill villages of Lazania and Gourri (traditional window and door carvings), joining a first-class road soon after Kalokhorio and returning via Pano and Kato Dheftera and Lakatamia.
Ancient Monument: Tarnassos tombs.
Opening Times Summer, daily. 9 a.m.-noon. 3 p.m.-6.30 p.m.
Custodian lives at Politico; winter daily at reasonable times.

Strovolos has now become a suburb of Nicosia.

The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary was rebuilt in 1817 with care to retain the apse and the dome of the original Byzantine building. It possesses a delightful and incongruous example of French Empire furniture, origin unknown, in the form of a chair. A chapel on the south side of the church has an interesting column as part of its outside wall, with an archiepiscopal crown forming the capital. It is believed that this is an anonymous memorial to Archbishop Kyprianos, who, in company with many other prelates and ecclesiastics, was massacred by the Turks in 1821.

A right turning near Kato Lakatamia leads in 2 m. to the Monastery of the Archangel Gabriel, which is on the farther side of the Pedieos River. The monastery belongs to the famous and wealthy Monastery of Kykko but has fallen into disuse. The monastic buildings and the church which served them are remarkably ambitious in conception, especially in view of their having been erected in 1636 very soon after the Turkish Conquest. Note the vast fresco of the Archangel (1785) and the iconostasis (1650), the tomb of the founder, Archbishop Nikephorus, in the narthex, and the graffiti near the north door. This records the years when it was necessary to bring the famous rain-working icon from Kykko to put an end to intolerable drought.

At Kato Dheftera a side road to the right leads in 1 m. to the unique Chapel of the Chrysospileotissa which is also situated on the far side of the Pedieos. This consists of a natural cave in the cliff which has been enlarged to 30 by 24 ft. Time and damp have taken toll of the interior plasterwork and paintings, but the little church is worth visiting, especially now that it has been made more accessible by local people grateful for the rain working powers of their Virgin. They have replaced the original precarious drawbridge by an iron-girdered structure. At the far end of Pano Dheftera turn left on to a secondary road. The site of the great ancient city of Tamassos extends between four villages, but is best reached from the southernmost, Politico.

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