Ayia Napa

According to local legend, a hunter chasing his prey found an icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave, and a monastery dedicated to her was built around it; the name Virgin Mary of Napa was later shortened to Ayia Napa. Another story tells of a Venetian noblewoman who, forbidden to marry a commoner, came to live there as a nun. The oldest surviving parts of the monastery are wall sections from before 1191, and most of its buildings date from the 14th to the 18th centuries.

Local tradition holds that the area, apart from the monastery, was empty until about 1790, when Nikolaos Kemitzis of Thessaloniki, in conflict with the Ottoman authorities, settled in the village of Panayia nearby. The population once consisted mainly of fishermen and farmers, in a district known as the Kokkinochoria, the Red Villages, after the red soil. Far older traces exist: excavations at Nissi Bay in 2005 found fire-lighting equipment about 12,000 years old.

Tourism began with visitors drawn by the beaches, many of them from Scandinavia, and grew into a nightlife resort. Between 1999 and 2003 Ayia Napa was the summer holiday destination of UK garage music. Since 2013 the town has shut down problem venues, upgraded its infrastructure, hotels and restaurants, and added new attractions: the foundation stone of the Ayia Napa Marina was laid in 2016, and the Museum of Underwater Sculptures opened in 2021. It remains a town of the Famagusta District, in the part of the district still controlled by the Republic of Cyprus.

Ayia Napa's culture has two faces. By night it is a clubbing resort, its square beside the monastery the centre of a scene that runs until daybreak; DJs from the UK garage era played here, BBC Radio 1 has broadcast beach parties from Nissi Beach, and the national tourism strategy of 2017 set the aim of making the town one of Europe's top three beach and nightclubbing destinations.

By day and out of season it is a Greek Cypriot town built around its monastery. The Ayia Napa International Festival, first held in September 1985, takes place each year in Seferis Square by the monastery. In 2010 the town's youth council founded a free music festival with headliners chosen by the public, and on 16 September 2007 Ayia Napa set a Guinness world record for the longest chain of dancers performing the syrtaki to "Zorba's Dance".

The sea is part of its identity too. Two municipal marine museums, the Thalassa Museum of the Sea and the Tornaritis-Pierides Museum of Marine Life, sit in the town, and the underwater sculptures off Pernera Beach have turned the seabed itself into a gallery.

Ayia Napa is overwhelmingly a tourist town, and its year follows the season. From late spring to autumn the hotels, beaches, bars and water-sports centres are full and the Square is busy until dawn; in winter the town is quiet. The beaches are run by the municipality.

Many of the people who work in the resorts live in Paralimni, about 6 km to the north, which has grown since 1974 with refugees from the north and is now the main commuter town for Ayia Napa and Protaras, as well as the temporary administrative centre of the Famagusta District. Bigger supermarkets are found there or in Larnaca rather than in the resort itself.

The night has its own timetable: the Square is nearly deserted until about half past nine, most clubbers do not go out until after eleven, and most clubs open after one in the morning. Mornings belong to the beaches.

The resort's restaurants serve every kind of international food, but Cypriot cooking is close at hand. A meze is the fullest way to try it: olives, tahini, skordalia (potato and garlic dip), taramosalata and ttalattouri, with bread and salad, then grilled halloumi, lountza (smoked pork tenderloin), keftedes (meatballs), sheftalia — minced meat with parsley and onion wrapped in caul fat and grilled — and loukaniko sausages.

On this fishing coast the fish meze is the natural choice, with calamari, octopus, cuttlefish, red mullet, sea bass and gilt-head bream; cuttlefish may be cooked like octopus in red wine with onions. The most traditional fish of all is salt cod, once baked in outdoor beehive ovens with potatoes and tomatoes. Souvlaki, meat grilled on skewers over charcoal, is the quick meal.

Halloumi, a semi-hard brined cheese of goat's and sheep's milk, may be eaten fresh, grilled or fried. For dessert there are loukoumades, fried dough balls in syrup, and baklava. Cypriot brandy is drunk with meze and is the base of the brandy sour, created on the island in the late 1930s, and zivania is the local grape spirit.