Things to Do in Nicosia's Walled City

Start here. It was built in 1572 by the Ottoman governor Muzaffer Pasha, to lodge travellers arriving from Anatolia and the rest of the island — a caravanserai, and one that still works as a place to sit down.

The plan is square and two-storeyed, with 68 rooms around a courtyard. In the middle of that courtyard stands a small mosque raised on six columns, with a fountain for ablutions beneath it. The ground-floor rooms were stables, storerooms and shops. It is one of the rare hans with two entrances.

Its later life is the interesting part. From 1878 the British used it as the central prison. Between 1903 and 1947 it was a hotel. Until 1962 it housed poor families as cheap accommodation. Restored in the 1990s, it now works as an arts centre, with galleries, workshops, craft shops and cafés in the old cells.

A Gothic cathedral with two Ottoman minarets on it — which tells you the history of the island in one building.

Work began in 1209 on what was then the Cathedral of St Sophia, described by Nicosia Municipality as the most important of the Lusignan masterpieces built in Cyprus in the pure Gothic style. It was consecrated and opened for worship in 1326. Immediately after the Ottomans took Nicosia on 9 September 1570 it was converted into a mosque, and the minarets went up.

It is a working mosque. Dress modestly, remove your shoes at the entrance, and be aware of prayer times.

Next to Selimiye stands a building that has been almost everything. It began as a church around the 6th century — a Byzantine basilica — and was expanded and rebuilt between the 12th and 16th centuries, picking up Renaissance French, Venetian and probably Spanish elements along the way while keeping its cross-shaped Byzantine plan. Under the Lusignans it was decorated rather than damaged, and under the Venetians it passed to the Greek Orthodox metropolis.

Under Ottoman rule it became the busiest and most important marketplace in Nicosia, where all kinds of goods were sold and textiles above all. In November 2009, after a five-year restoration, it reopened as a cultural venue.

It does not keep museum hours. It works as an events space — exhibitions, whirling dervish performances, concerts, workshops — so whether you can go inside depends on what is on that week. The exterior and its carved doorway are worth the four-minute walk regardless.

The Gambler's Inn, from the end of the 17th century — a smaller, plainer town han than Büyük Han. It had 56 rooms; travellers slept upstairs, animals and goods stayed on the ground floor. It has been fully restored and now holds cafés, restaurants and craft shops.

Arasta is the old market street that runs south of Büyük Han, closed to traffic and busy from early morning until late. Jewellers, traditional craft shops and souvenir stalls line it, and the Bandabuliya — the covered municipal market — sits alongside.

This is not a monument to tick off. It is where the everyday life of the old town still happens, and it is the natural route between most of the buildings on this page.

The walls are the reason the old city has the shape it has, and their bastions — Yiğitler Burcu among them — still mark its edge.

Kyrenia Gate, the northern entrance, was built by the Venetians in the 1560s and originally called Porta del Provveditore, after the Italian engineer Francesco Barbaro. The Lion of St Mark was carved on it.

The Ottomans left their own marks. Quranic verses meaning "the Opener of Gates" were inscribed on the north face; a marble panel bearing the tughra of Sultan Mahmud II was set into the south face; a domed guard room was added. The gate was repaired in 1821 and renamed Edirne Kapısı. The roads the British cut around it in 1931 are still the main way into the walled city.

In the middle of Atatürk Square stands the Venetian Column, raised in 1550 during Venetian rule and still almost undamaged. Six coats of arms of leading Venetian families are carved at its base. It has moved twice — first to the front of the Sarayönü Mosque, then, under the British, to the square where it stands now.

Built at the beginning of the 17th century, following earlier lodges of 1593 and 1607, this was a Mevlevi lodge — a place of spiritual retreat, where the dervishes held their sema. It opened as the Turkish Cypriot Ethnography Museum in 1963 and reopened as the Mevlana Museum in 2002.

Inside are Rumi's Mesnevi, dervish costume, musical instruments, Ottoman gravestones from the 18th century onwards, and historic manuscripts. In the sheikhs' section, sixteen unmarked graves lie beneath six domes.

West of the centre, in the Arabahmet quarter, the Dervish Pasha Mansion is a two-storey Ottoman house — cut stone below, mudbrick above — restored by the Department of Antiquities and Museums and now an ethnography museum of the island's domestic life.

The quarter around it is worth the walk on its own: old mansions, the Arabahmet Mosque, and the Arabahmet Cultural House.

A short street of small, identical, brightly painted houses — an Ottoman-era scheme described as the first social housing built on Cyprus. It is one of the most photographed corners of the walled city and takes ten minutes to see.

Two more buildings show the same Lusignan-to-Ottoman story as Selimiye, in miniature.

The Lusignan House, on Yeni Cami Sokak, dates from the 1500s; the motifs on the arches at its entrance are the thing to look at.

Haydarpaşa Mosque was built in the 14th century as the church of St Catherine and converted after the Ottoman conquest. The historian Sir Harry Luke called it one of the most elegant buildings on the island.

The Lokmacı crossing sits on Ledra Street, in the same cluster as Büyük Han, the Bedesten and the Bandabuliya — a few minutes' walk from the hammam. It is one of the pedestrian crossing points on the Green Line that divides the island, closed during the intercommunal conflict of 1963–64 and reopened on 3 April 2008.

Practical points, in the order they matter:

• It is pedestrian only. You cannot drive through.
• You show an identity card or a passport.
• Turkish citizens should check before setting out. A Turkish identity card or passport does not give direct entry to the southern side; the Republic of Cyprus requires a visa for Turkish passport holders. It is worth confirming your own situation in advance rather than at the barrier.

North of the crossing is the historic walled-city bazaar, and everything described above.

For visitors whose documents allow the crossing, the southern half of the island continues the same history under different administration. Three places are worth knowing about.

Ledra Street carries straight on south of the crossing as a pedestrian shopping street — cafés, restaurants and shops, busier and more modern in feel than the Arasta side.

The Cyprus Museum, a short walk further, holds the island's largest archaeological collection: material from the Neolithic period through to the Roman era, gathered from excavations across Cyprus.

Hala Sultan Tekke, near Larnaca, is further afield but the most significant Ottoman site on the island. It stands on the west bank of the Larnaca Salt Lake and holds the tomb of Umm Haram, who died on Cyprus during the Arab raids of the 7th century. The mosque and tekke around the tomb were built between 1760 and 1817, and the complex — mosque, mausoleum, cemetery and residential quarters — is still used for worship. Cyprus placed Hala Sultan Tekke and the Larnaca Salt Lake Complex on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2016. Entry is free.

If you have more than a day, three of these are within an hour's drive and none of them needs a crossing.

Kyrenia (Girne) has a 7th-century castle on its harbour, built to defend the town from the sea and holding Venetian, Byzantine, British and Ottoman material — including a two-thousand-year-old shipwreck museum.

Bellapais Abbey, 24 km from Nicosia, looks north over the Mediterranean from one slope and over a valley from the other. Its church survives best; the frescoes inside are 15th century.

St Hilarion Castle, 30 km away in the Beşparmak mountains, stands at around 700 metres and is reached by some 480 steps. The view over the island is the reason people climb it.

Famagusta (Gazimağusa) is further — around 60 km — with its own walled city, Othello's Tower from the 14th century, and the ancient city of Salamis 55 km from Nicosia.

The official North Cyprus tourism site describes Büyük Hamam as the only original Turkish bath still active in Northern Cyprus. It is also the only hammam on Nicosia Municipality's list of the walled city's historic and touristic sites.

It stands a short walk from Büyük Han, in the same early Ottoman city — Büyük Han was built in 1572, and Büyük Hamam was converted into an Ottoman bath between 1571 and 1590. The building was fully restored by the Evkaf foundation and reopened on 1 June 2024, so what you walk into is a four-and-a-half-century-old bathhouse that has just been put back in order.

Which is the argument for leaving it until last. You will have spent the day on stone streets between buildings that are four and five hundred years old; the bath at the end of it belongs to the same city and the same century, and it is still doing the job it was built for.