Nicosia Audio Tours

Nicosia is divided by a buffer zone that has run through the city since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded Cyprus following a Greek-backed coup. The Green Line, named for the color of the pen an officer used to draw it on a map in 1963 during an earlier conflict, cuts across the old city inside the Venetian walls, turning the historic center into a place where you can walk through a UN checkpoint on Ledra Street and find yourself in a different world in under a minute. The southern side is the Republic of Cyprus and the north is the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey. The checkpoints reopened in 2003 and 2008, and crossing back and forth is now a routine part of how the city functions.

The Venetian walls built in 1567 survive almost completely and circle the old city in an 11-bastion star pattern that was state of the art for artillery defense.

Inside the southern half, the Eleftheria Square redesigned by Zaha Hadid Architects was completed in 2021 and connects the old city to the modern commercial center. Ledra Street, the pedestrian shopping street that runs to the crossing point, was called Murder Mile during the 1955-1959 EOKA independence campaign and is now a place where teenagers buy coffee and tourists buy postcards. The Cyprus Museum near the old city holds Chalcolithic figurines from 3000 BC alongside classical sculpture and Byzantine gold, all from this one island.