Few places in Cyprus are as striking at first sight as Kourion. This ancient Greco-Roman city spreads across a cliff that drops into the Mediterranean, and its jewel, a beautifully restored ancient theatre, looks out over the blue sea like a balcony over history. Sitting on its stone tiers with the sea horizon behind is one of those moments that sum up why the island of Aphrodite is worth the trip.
But Kourion is much more than its theatre. It was one of the great city-kingdoms of ancient Cyprus, and today it preserves an exceptional ensemble: the luxurious House of Eustolios with its mosaics and early Christian baths, the House of the Gladiators and the House of Achilles with their figurative floors, an episcopal basilica, the agora, the public fountain (nymphaeum) and, a short distance away, the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates and a Greco-Roman stadium. All of it set among cliffs and sea that make it even more beautiful.
This guide takes a practical, friendly look at Kourion: what to see at the site and around it, how to get there from Limassol, when to go to avoid the heat, how much admission costs and what to combine it with in the area (Kolossi, the beach, the Sanctuary of Apollo). It's an essential visit in southern Cyprus and a living lesson in ancient history by the Mediterranean.
Kourion was one of the main city-kingdoms of ancient Cyprus, traditionally said to have been founded by Greek settlers from Argos. It flourished under Greek and above all Roman rule, when its theatre, mosaic-floored villas, baths and agora were built. It was also an early Christian centre, with its episcopal basilica. A devastating earthquake in 365 AD destroyed much of the city, an event of which excavations have uncovered moving evidence. Kourion partly recovered in the early Christian and Byzantine periods, but declined with the Arab raids of the 7th-8th centuries, when the population moved inland. Nearby stands the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, one of the most important religious centres on the island. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The southern coast, birthplace of Stoic philosophy in ancient Kition, scene of Richard the Lionheart's wedding in Limassol and home of the world's oldest wine, with the mythical setting of Aphrodite's birth.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Kourion (Curium to the Romans) was one of the great city-kingdoms into which ancient Cyprus was divided. It stood in a strategic and spectacular spot: the top of a cliff above the sea, on the island's south coast. The site was easy to defend and looked out over the Mediterranean. The earliest traces of settlement in the area go back to prehistory, but the city itself grew up in the Iron Age.
Greek tradition, recorded by the historian Herodotus, said Kourion was founded by Greek settlers from Argos, in the Peloponnese. This Argive 'family tree' was part of the story Cypriot cities told to claim their origins and their Greek identity, at a time when the island was a mosaic of Greek, Phoenician and Eastern influences. Whether or not it was literally true, it shows how strongly Greek Kourion was.
Like the other Cypriot city-kingdoms, Kourion had its own kings and lived under one great power of the day after another: the Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians all ruled or influenced Cyprus at different times. One of its kings, Stasanor, became notorious for switching sides in the middle of the Battle of Salamis in Cyprus (498 BC), during the Ionian Revolt against Persia. Herodotus recorded the episode as an example of betrayal.
A few kilometres from the city stood one of the most important religious centres in all of Cyprus: the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates. The epithet 'Hylates' means 'of the woods' or 'of the sacred grove', and it referred to Apollo as the protector of the woodlands and of Kourion itself. Worship here goes back to the Archaic period (8th–7th century BC) and lasted for more than a thousand years, well into Roman times.
The sanctuary was a major complex, with the temple of Apollo, buildings to house pilgrims, a palaestra for physical exercise, baths and sacred rooms. Worshippers came from all over the island to honour the god, and the rules were strict: according to the sources, anyone who touched Apollo's altar committed a sacrilege, and tradition says the punishment was being thrown off the cliff into the sea. Real or legendary, that detail gives a sense of how sacred and feared the place was.
Today the temple of Apollo has been partly rebuilt, and its columns standing out among the pines make one of the most evocative images of ancient Cyprus. The sanctuary is quieter than the main site and helps you picture the busy religious life that revolved around Kourion.
When Cyprus became part of the Roman world (the island was a Roman province from 58 BC), Kourion reached its peak. It was a prosperous, monumental city with everything a Roman city had: a theatre, an agora lined with colonnades, public baths, a nymphaeum (a monumental fountain dedicated to the nymphs), aqueducts bringing water from far away, and luxurious private villas.
The theatre, built in the 2nd century BC and remodelled in Roman times, is now the site's most famous monument. It sits right at the edge of the cliff above the sea and could hold several thousand spectators. It was used for plays and, in Roman times, for shows with wild animals. The city's great villas were decorated with splendid floor mosaics, like those in the House of the Gladiators, with fight scenes and the fighters' names, and the House of Achilles, with scenes from mythology.
Imperial Kourion was a rich, cultured and cosmopolitan city, part of the trade and cultural routes of the Roman Mediterranean. Its people enjoyed a high standard of living, as the baths, the mosaics and the plentiful water brought in by hydraulic engineering show. Nothing hinted at the disaster that was coming.
On 21 July AD 365, a hugely violent earthquake shook the whole eastern Mediterranean, followed in many places by a tsunami. One of the most destructive earthquakes of antiquity, it hit Crete, Egypt, the Peloponnese and, of course, Cyprus hard. Kourion, up on its cliff, was all but flattened.
Excavations at Kourion have uncovered chilling evidence of that disaster. In one house, archaeologists found the remains of a family (a man, a woman and a child) caught by the collapse while shielding one another, along with domestic animals trapped in the stables. These finds, frozen at the moment of the disaster, make Kourion one of the few places where you can almost 'see' the earthquake of 365 with your own eyes, and they give the site a moving human side.
The earthquake was a turning point in the city's history. Many buildings were destroyed and much of the population died or fled. Kourion was partly rebuilt over the following decades, but it never fully regained the splendour of its earlier Roman period.
After the earthquake, Kourion was partly rebuilt, this time as a Christian city. Christianity had spread in Cyprus very early (according to tradition, the apostles Paul and Barnabas preached on the island in the 1st century) and was by then the dominant religion. Kourion became the seat of a bishop, and in the 5th century a large episcopal basilica with a baptistery was built. Its column bases and fragments of mosaics survive today. The luxurious House of Eustolios was rebuilt in this period as a bath complex open to the public, with mosaics that mention Christ.
So the city lived a second, more modest life in the Early Christian and early Byzantine periods. But a new threat hung over the coast: from the 7th century onwards, Arab raids during the wars between the Byzantine Empire and the Caliphate repeatedly devastated the coastal cities of Cyprus. Kourion, exposed on its clifftop by the sea, suffered these attacks.
As happened in so many other places on the island, people gradually left the coastal city and moved inland to safer places such as nearby Episkopi (its name, 'bishopric', is a reminder that the bishop's seat moved there). Kourion was abandoned, and little by little its ruins were covered by earth and forgotten.
For centuries, the ruins of Kourion lay buried and half-forgotten on their cliff. Modern interest in the site began in the 19th century, the age of the great antiquarians and collectors. One of the most controversial figures linked to Kourion was Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the American consul in Cyprus under Ottoman rule. He carelessly dug up many sites on the island, Kourion among them, and shipped out thousands of objects, many of which ended up in foreign museums. Later archaeologists have strongly questioned his methods and the provenance of his finds.
Modern scientific excavations, mostly during the 20th century, uncovered the complex we can visit today: the theatre, the villas with their mosaics, the baths, the basilica, the agora, the stadium and the Sanctuary of Apollo. It was during these digs that the evidence of the earthquake of 365, which so moves visitors, came to light.
Today Kourion is one of the most visited and most impressive archaeological sites in Cyprus, managed by the Department of Antiquities. Its restored theatre hosts performances again in summer, and the whole site, set among cliffs and sea, takes you through more than two thousand years of history: from Greek city-kingdom to Roman city, from splendour to disaster, and from Christian Kourion to the ruins that still amaze anyone who looks at them from the top of the cliff.
