Paphos

Two places have carried the name Paphos. Old Paphos, at today's Kouklia on a hill east of the modern city, was the seat of one of the ancient city-kingdoms of Cyprus and the centre of the worship of Aphrodite, whose sanctuary stayed in use until Theodosius I outlawed pagan cults in 391. Nea Paphos, New Paphos, was founded on the coast beside a natural harbour in the late 4th century BC and became the island's capital under much of Ptolemaic and Roman rule, a major trading port of the eastern Mediterranean. According to the Acts of the Apostles, it was here that the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus was converted, and here that Saul is first called Paul.

Earthquakes struck again and again — in 76 AD and, most destructively, in 1222, when the Byzantine fortress of Saranta Kolones was ruined and replaced by a new castle at the harbour. As Nicosia and the port of Larnaca grew more important, Paphos declined through the Middle Ages and Ottoman rule, and under British rule many of its people left for Limassol, Nicosia and abroad.

The turn came after 1974. Tourism grew quickly, above all in Kato Paphos, and the government built dams, roads and Paphos International Airport, which opened in 1982. In 1980 UNESCO inscribed Nea Paphos, the Tombs of the Kings and Palaepaphos as a World Heritage Site. In 2017 Paphos was European Capital of Culture alongside Aarhus in Denmark, and the city centre was improved in the years before it. Strong earthquakes in 1953, 1995, 1996 and 2022 are a reminder of the old danger.

Paphos lives with its antiquity. The mosaics of the House of Dionysos and its neighbours, laid in the villas of the city's elite between the 3rd and 5th centuries, are among the finest in the eastern Mediterranean, and the myth of Aphrodite — rising from the sea off this coast and worshipped for centuries at Palaepaphos — still frames how the town presents itself. Christian heritage is just as visible: the column in the grounds of Panagia Chrysopolitissa recalls the legend of Paul's flogging, and the hermitage of Saint Neophytos lies in the hills to the north.

The city's cultural life widened with its year as European Capital of Culture in 2017, when events through the year included a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic. Every late summer the Pafos Aphrodite Festival stages an opera in the open air in front of the medieval castle at the harbour.

Paphos is Greek Cypriot in language and faith, with the Orthodox calendar and Easter at the centre of the year, and its district is still a place of villages: the wine-growing Laona plateau, the loukoumi makers of Geroskipou and the tavernas of Kathikas.

The municipality had about 36,000 people in 2018, and the wider urban area about 55,000, making Paphos the fourth-largest city in Cyprus after Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca. Its two halves have different jobs. Ktima, the upper town, is the main residential district; Kato Paphos, by the sea, holds the medieval port, most of the hotels and the entertainment, and employs over half of the city's population.

Tourism dominates the economy, alongside the fishing harbour and the services of a district capital. There are four resorts in the district — Kato Paphos, Coral Bay, Latchi and Aphrodite Hills — and a university, Neapolis University. Paphos was once the only traffic-free town in Cyprus; urbanisation and a rising population in less than ten years changed that, and Apostolou Pavlou Avenue, linking the two quarters, is now the busiest road in the city.

Life follows the heat. From late June to early September days are hot and humid, and the seafront fills in the evenings; most rain falls between November and mid-March, when the resort side of town is far quieter.

Paphos eats as the rest of Cyprus does, and meze is the fullest way to do it: a progression of small dishes that begins with olives, tahini, skordalia (potato and garlic dip), taramosalata and ttalattouri, the Cypriot yoghurt dip, with bread and salad, then moves on to grilled halloumi, lountza (smoked pork tenderloin), keftedes (meatballs), sheftalia — a sausage of minced meat with parsley and onion wrapped in caul fat and grilled — and loukaniko. On the coast a fish meze adds calamari, octopus, cuttlefish, red mullet, sea bass and gilt-head bream.

Souvla is meat — pork, kid, beef, lamb or chicken — grilled over charcoal on skewers, and kleftiko is marinated meat, traditionally lamb or goat, slow-roasted. Halloumi itself is a semi-hard brined cheese of goat's and sheep's milk, eaten fresh, grilled or fried.

Geroskipou, on the city's eastern edge, is famous for loukoumi, the confection known in English as Turkish delight; Cyprus delights hold a protected geographical indication in the EU, and Geroskipou is the only place with one for lokum. Other sweets include loukoumades, fried dough balls in syrup. To drink there is Commandaria, the sweet dessert wine, zivania, a grape spirit, and Cypriot brandy, the base of the brandy sour cocktail created on the island in the late 1930s; the Laona villages above the city grow xynisteri grapes.