Few cities tell their story as powerfully as Famagusta. Inside its colossal Venetian walls lies an almost surreal landscape: huge Gothic churches from the Crusader era, some turned into mosques, others reduced to skeletons of golden stone open to the sky, among quiet streets and palm trees. It was one of the richest and most cosmopolitan cities of the medieval Mediterranean —it was said to have a church for every day of the year— and the setting Shakespeare imagined for his 'Othello'. Today it is an open-air museum of a melancholy, unforgettable beauty.
Famagusta is in the Turkish Cypriot north, so visiting from the south means crossing the Green Line that has divided the island since 1974. And here recent history becomes tangible in the starkest way: on the outskirts of the walled city lies Varosha, a modern district of hotels and buildings that in the seventies was one of the most glamorous holiday destinations in the Mediterranean, and which was evacuated and sealed off in 1974, remaining ever since a ghost town frozen in time. It is one of the most striking and saddest places in Europe, and it should be approached with respect.
This guide covers Famagusta with a practical, warm approach, and with the restraint its history demands: how to cross from the south and the insurance you need for the car, what to see in the walled city (the Gothic cathedral turned mosque, the walls, Othello's Tower, the ruined churches), how to view Varosha respectfully and how to combine the visit with nearby Salamis. Famagusta is not a beach-and-postcard destination: it's a journey into history, medieval grandeur and the open wound of Cyprus, and that's why it leaves a mark that is hard to forget.
Famagusta grew up beside the best natural harbour in eastern Cyprus. Modest in Antiquity —in the shadow of neighbouring Salamis—, it became one of the richest cities in the world in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the fall of the last Crusader strongholds in the Holy Land turned it into the great eastern trading port of Lusignan Cyprus. That wealth paid for dozens of Gothic churches, among them St Nicholas Cathedral, where the kings of Cyprus were crowned. The Venetians, who annexed the island in 1489, surrounded the city with formidable walls that in 1570-1571 withstood one of the most famous sieges in history against the Ottomans: after almost a year, Famagusta fell, the cathedral became a mosque and three centuries of Ottoman rule began. Under British rule and after independence in 1960, Varosha, a modern resort district, flourished next to the old town. The Turkish invasion of 1974 left Famagusta in the north and turned Varosha into a sealed-off ghost town. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The touristy east with its golden beaches, and the Turkish Cypriot north beyond the Green Line. Here you'll find ancient Salamis, Gothic Famagusta and its ghost quarter of Varosha, and the harbour of Kyrenia beneath its medieval castle.
Read the history of The east and the north (Ayia Napa, Kyrenia, Famagusta) →They depart from Protaras, 16 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
For much of Antiquity, the spot where Famagusta stands today was little more than a modest settlement in the shadow of its powerful neighbour, Salamis, the great metropolis of Cyprus's eastern coast. The city began life as Arsinoe, founded in the 3rd century BC by the Greek pharaoh Ptolemy II of Egypt, who named it after his wife and sister Arsinoe. It was a small, secondary port while Salamis, a few kilometres to the north, held the wealth, the power and the people.
Everything changed from the 7th century onwards. When Arab raids and the silting up of its harbour forced the abandonment of Salamis, its inhabitants moved to this neighbouring spot, which began to grow. The new settlement took the name Ammochostos, 'hidden in the sand' in Greek, which gave rise to the Italian 'Famagosta', the Spanish and English 'Famagusta' and the Turkish 'Mağusa'. In this way, Famagusta inherited the role Salamis had played for centuries as the sea gateway to the east of the island.
Over the following centuries, under Byzantine rule, Famagusta remained a town of modest size. Nothing suggested that, in the Middle Ages, this humble port would become one of the richest and most dazzling cities in the whole Mediterranean. The turning point would come with the Crusades and the fall of the last Christian strongholds in the Holy Land.
Famagusta's great moment came in the 13th and 14th centuries, under the Lusignans, the Frankish dynasty that ruled Cyprus. The trigger was the fall of Acre in 1291, the last major Crusader stronghold in the Holy Land: when the Christians lost their positions in the Levant, many refugees, merchants and religious orders settled in Famagusta, which overnight became the Christian world's great trading port in the East, the meeting point between Europe and the routes carrying spices, silk and goods from Asia.
The wealth that flowed through its port was legendary. The merchants of Famagusta were said to be among the richest in the world, and their daughters' dowries were said to outshine those of European princesses. With that money, the city filled up with churches: a cosmopolitan community of Latins, Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Nestorians and Jews each built their own places of worship, so many that tradition claims Famagusta once had almost as many churches as there are days in the year. Many survive today, some as evocative ruins.
The jewel of them all was St Nicholas Cathedral, an imposing Gothic cathedral built between the late 13th and the 14th century, inspired by the great cathedrals of northern France. This is where the Lusignan kings of Cyprus were crowned. They also held the honorary title of kings of Jerusalem, and that coronation took place right here too, in the church that is now the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque. It was the symbol of an age of splendour that would never return.
In 1489, Cyprus passed to the Republic of Venice, when the island's last queen, Caterina Cornaro (Venetian by birth and widow of the Lusignan king), handed her kingdom over to her native city. For Venice, Famagusta was a strategic stronghold of the first order: its best port in the eastern Mediterranean, facing an Ottoman Empire in full expansion. The Venetians turned the city into a formidable fortress, surrounding it with the colossal walls that still enclose it completely today: walls tens of metres thick, angled bastions designed to withstand artillery, moats and ramparts, partly the work of the engineer Michele Sanmicheli.
This Venetian period also gave the city one of its most famous literary associations. William Shakespeare set the action of his tragedy 'Othello, the Moor of Venice' in Famagusta, 'a seaport in Cyprus'. That is why the fortress guarding the harbour is known as Othello Castle, and above its gate you can still see the Lion of St Mark, emblem of the Most Serene Republic. History and literature merge in its stones.
The Venetian walls were no luxury: the Ottoman threat was real and close at hand. And it soon came. In 1570, after taking Nicosia, the Ottoman army laid siege to Famagusta, the last Christian position on the island. So began one of the most famous and tragic sieges in the history of the Mediterranean.
The siege of Famagusta began on 17 September 1570 and lasted almost a year, until 5 August 1571. It was an uneven and heroic stand: only about 8,500 Venetian and Cypriot defenders, led by Marcantonio Bragadin and General Astorre Baglioni, held out against a huge Ottoman army commanded by Lala Mustafa Pasha. Sources put that army at anywhere from 50,000 to more than 100,000 men, backed by a naval blockade and overwhelming artillery. For months, the small garrison beat back assault after assault from behind the walls, in ever more desperate conditions, with no food or ammunition and without the help Venice failed to send in time.
The resistance had a historic consequence well beyond the city. By pinning down the bulk of the Ottoman army for almost a year, Famagusta gave the Christian Holy League time to assemble the fleet that, a few weeks later in October 1571, would defeat the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto.
The ending was horrific. With supplies exhausted, Bragadin negotiated the surrender in exchange for safe passage for the defenders. But at the handover ceremony on 5 August 1571, Lala Mustafa Pasha accused him of having killed Turkish prisoners and had him mutilated (his ears and nose were cut off). Days later, he had him flayed alive in the city square. His skin, stuffed with straw and set on an ox, was paraded through Famagusta and sent as a trophy to Constantinople. The episode, extreme in its cruelty, was etched into European memory as a symbol of the horror of those wars. With the fall of Famagusta, all of Cyprus passed into Ottoman hands, and St Nicholas Cathedral became a mosque.
Under Ottoman rule (1571-1878), Famagusta changed its face. The Gothic St Nicholas Cathedral was renamed the Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque, after the conqueror, and a minaret was added beside the Gothic façade. Other churches met a similar fate. Much of the Greek Cypriot Christian population ended up outside the walled city, which was settled mainly by Muslim Turkish Cypriots. For centuries, the old town was a quiet and somewhat faded military stronghold.
With the arrival of British administration in 1878, and above all in the 20th century, the city grew again, but this time outside the walls. South of the old town a new, modern district developed: Varosha (Maraş in Turkish), home mostly to Greek Cypriots. After Cyprus became independent in 1960, Varosha turned into the island's great tourism engine: a strip of high-rise hotels along a magnificent sandy beach, with shops, restaurants and a nightlife that made it one of the most glamorous destinations in the Mediterranean. Celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton stayed at its hotels, the Argo, the Asterias and the Grecian among them. In the early seventies, Varosha was a byword for luxury and modernity.
That splendour went out overnight. In 1974, the history of Famagusta, like that of all Cyprus, took a tragic turn from which the city has still not recovered.
In July 1974, a coup by Greek Cypriot factions seeking union with Greece, backed by the military dictatorship then ruling in Athens, triggered a Turkish military invasion that occupied the northern third of Cyprus. Famagusta ended up on the Turkish side. As the army advanced, the Greek Cypriot population of Varosha, tens of thousands of people, fled en masse southwards to towns such as Paralimni and Deryneia, convinced they would be able to return within a few days. They could not. The Turkish army sealed off the district with barbed wire and declared it a closed military zone.
Since then, Varosha has stayed empty and fenced off for almost half a century: an entire town of hotels, homes and shops abandoned from one day to the next, with shop windows frozen in 1974, plants taking over the streets and buildings slowly crumbling by the sea. It is one of the most striking and saddest sights in Europe. In 1984, UN Security Council Resolution 550 declared 'inadmissible' any attempt to settle Varosha with people other than its original inhabitants, and called for the district to be placed under United Nations administration.
This is a subject best approached with restraint and respect. Behind every empty building are families who lost everything and who, decades later, still cannot return to their homes. It is an open wound, experienced very differently by each community, and it is part of the wider 'Cyprus problem', still unresolved despite many rounds of UN-sponsored negotiations.
Half a century after 1974, Famagusta is still a city split between two histories. Inside its Venetian walls, the old town holds an extraordinary medieval heritage: the Lala Mustafa Pasha cathedral-mosque, the walls, Othello Castle and dozens of ruined Gothic churches. Today it is one of the most impressive historic ensembles in the Mediterranean and also one of the most fragile, with much of it still awaiting a restoration that its complex political situation makes difficult.
Outside the walls, Varosha is back in the news, and not without controversy. Since October 2020, the Turkish Cypriot authorities, backed by Turkey, have partially opened some of the district's streets and its seafront to visitors, who can now explore part of the ghost town on foot or by bike. The move has been criticised by the European Union, the UN and the Republic of Cyprus, which regard it as a breach of international resolutions; the European Court of Human Rights has also awarded compensation to Greek Cypriots deprived of their property. Access arrangements may change, and the issue remains politically very sensitive.
For all these reasons, visiting Famagusta today is much more than an archaeological outing. It means looking out over the medieval grandeur of the 'city of a hundred churches', the epic of the 1571 siege and, just a few metres away, the still-open wound of a divided Cyprus. Few places pack so much history, beauty and melancholy into so little space. Explore it through the eyes of memory and respect, not morbid curiosity.
