Key Notes | Europe’s last divided capital has long been overlooked by tourists but offers history, culture — and a slick new 10-bedroom retreat
What’s the buzz? The divided capital of Cyprus is a rarity: an ancient European city with historic mosques and cathedrals, museums and galleries, as well as beaches within relatively easy reach — yet one that longs for more tourism. Now Thanos Hotels, a family-owned brand with coastal hotels in other parts of the island, as well as on Mykonos, has opened its first property in Nicosia, a stylish boutique hotel within the Venetian walled old city.
Location, location, location From the moment the taxi from Larnaca airport (about 45 minutes) turns into Patriarchou Gregoriou Street, past the majestic early 18th-century church of Agios Antonios, it’s obvious which is the hotel: a crisply whitewashed double-fronted mansion, with honey-coloured sandstone quoins and lintels and blue-grey shutters.
In the heart of the Greek-speaking southern half of the city, the hotel is within 20 minutes’ walk of the main museums and also convenient for Eleftheria (Liberty) Square, an immense plaza and green space in the shadow of the Venetian walls that was completed in 2021, having been remodelled by the late Zaha Hadid in her signature futuristic style.
Checking in Latterly a girls’ school, the hotel was built at the start of the 20th century as a private house. Its protected status means it retains lots of carefully restored original features: the tiles on the lobby floor, the majestic curving staircase, the meticulous trompe-l’oeil relief plasterwork on the ceiling of one of the suites. “It took us two years to do 10 rooms,” says Natasha Michaelides, one of the three Nicosia-based siblings who own and operate Thanos Hotels, which was founded by their father. “I mean who does that?”
Three of the 10 rooms are on the ground floor; six are on the first and there’s another suite in a classically pedimented extension on the roof. My suite had a compact shower room (generously supplied with Aqua di Parma toiletries) and a bedroom just big enough for a king-size bed, armchair and desk. When I threw open the doors on the opposite wall, however, I found a spacious south-facing terrace with a panoramic view of several of the city’s church towers and minarets, Jean Nouvel’s distinctive 67-metre high-rise Tower 25 and, in the distance, the jagged peaks of the Pentadaktylos range of the Kyrenia mountains.
Any irritants? Only the profusion of touchscreens — six in my room — that remained brightly illuminated all night.
What about the restaurant? “There was no point in doing another taverna when the neighbourhood is full of them,” says Natasha Michaelides. (For traditional meze and souvlaki, she recommended Aigaion House, which I much enjoyed.)
Instead, they’ve opened Amyth Kouzina (kitchen), where the cooking is what you might call modern Mediterranean and is clearly a hit with the locals. Its British chef, Andrew Michael Smith, who formerly cooked for the directors and box-holders at Chelsea Football Club, has put together a menu (starters from €14; mains from €32) strong on flavourful locally grown vegetables and fish. I couldn’t fault the fat fillets of bream, nor the sea bass crudo with farmed caviar from Paphos.
The portions are huge, but it’s worth keeping space for the fragrant citrus sorbets and the light-as-air cheesecake with kumquats. Desserts are where Smith is at his most creative. They’re also an excuse for a glass of Commandaria, a Madeira-like dessert wine made from grapes grown in the foothills of Cyprus’s Troodos mountains.
Is there a spa? No, but guests in need of a scrub and a massage can visit Hamam Ömeriye, 200 metres away. Built, along with the imposing mosque of the same name (you’ll hear the muezzin from the hotel), on the site of an Augustinian church by the Ottoman Turks in the 1570s, it was restored in 2005 and has private steam rooms as well as facilities for women and men.
What else is there to do? “You have to cross the Green Line to understand the history of Nicosia,” says Anna Marangou, a knowledgeable archaeologist and art historian who will accompany Amyth guests on walking tours of both sides of the old city, which remains divided by a double line of barbed-wire fences.
We crossed into the Turkish-controlled north at the Lidras Street checkpoint, which divides one of the city’s main shopping streets. Formalities are straightforward. A border official glances at your passport (it’s not stamped), you walk 20 metres through a buffer zone, and show it again on the Turkish side, where the staff sit under a huge portrait of Ataturk.
The architecture here is more obviously Islamic. There are two beautifully preserved caravanserais, and the towering Selimiye mosque, formerly a 13th-century cathedral in the French Gothic style, which now has mashrabiya latticework in what were its stained-glass windows. But though the north is noisier and scruffier, it’s still palpably the same city.
Back in the south, there are several not-to-be-missed museums — notably the fascinating Byzantine Museum, which reopened in March after a five-year renovation and now has state-of-the art displays involving touchscreens, VR headsets and holograms, as well as one of the largest collections of icons in the world. It’s very much worth a couple of hours, both for the beauty of the paintings and mosaics it displays, but also the affecting stories they tell of this fought-over island.
I’d also highly recommend the AG Leventis Gallery, which opened in 2014, a purpose-built space housing 800 or so works from the stellar collection of old masters and impressionists amassed by the late Cypriot entrepreneur and philanthropist Anastasios Leventis.
Elevator pitch An ideal base for an alternative city break.
Click here to read the article in the Financial Times.