Cyprus remains one of the few places in the world with a physically divided capital, Nicosia has been split since 1974 by a UN-monitored buffer zone separating the Greek Cypriot south from the Turkish Cypriot north, following a Turkish military intervention triggered by a Greek-backed coup, a division that has persisted for half a century despite repeated reunification talks. That split extends across the wider island, an internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Turkey itself, in the north.
Ancient Greek mythology holds that Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, was born from sea foam off Cyprus’s southwestern coast near Paphos, emerging fully formed near a rock formation still called Petra tou Romiou, “the Rock of the Greek,” a site that has drawn visitors specifically for that mythological association for centuries.
A Crossroads Fought Over for Millennia, Not Just Decades
Cyprus’s strategic position between Europe, Asia, and Africa has made it a contested territory for thousands of years before its modern division, ruled at various points by Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Venetians, Ottomans, and finally the British, each leaving distinct architectural and cultural traces still visible across the island today. Paphos, Aphrodite’s mythological birthplace, contains extensive Roman-era mosaics and archaeological remains significant enough to have earned the town UNESCO World Heritage status, a genuinely ancient layer beneath the island’s more recent political tensions.
Despite decades of division, both halves of Cyprus have developed substantial, if separate, tourism industries, drawing visitors for beaches, ancient ruins, and a Mediterranean climate that has remained consistent even as the island’s political boundaries have not.
Painting a Coastline Mythology Claims as Sacred
Cyprus’s dramatic rocky coastline, tied directly to one of Greek mythology’s most enduring stories, gives a watercolourist rich colour and legend to work with. We’ve captured that coastal light in our own Cyprus Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of the Mediterranean for a wall at home.
Claimed by myth as the birthplace of love and shaped in reality by millennia of contested rule, Cyprus remains an island whose ancient stories and modern politics have never fully separated from each other.