If the Cypriot coast is sun, beaches and archaeology, the Troodos Mountains are its other face: pine and cedar forests, fresh air, stone villages clinging to the slopes and an artistic treasure few expect to find on a Mediterranean island. Ten small Byzantine churches tucked away in these valleys, with pitched timber roofs and walls covered in dazzling frescoes, together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Stepping into one of them, in the half-light, and discovering centuries of religious painting covering every inch is one of the great surprises of a trip to Cyprus.
The massif peaks at Mount Olympus, almost 2,000 metres high, which is covered in snow in winter and even has ski slopes. All around lie vineyards producing some of the island's best wines, monasteries such as the mighty Kykkos, waterfalls, trails and villages like Kakopetria, Platres, Omodos or Pedoulas, where time seems to move more slowly and the food tastes of the mountains: trout, fresh halloumi, cured meats, jams and the local sweet, soutzoukos.
This guide covers Troodos with a practical, warm eye: which painted churches to see, how to get to Kykkos Monastery, which villages are worth a stop, which trails to walk, when to go and where to sleep and eat. It is the ideal destination to escape the heat and bustle of the coast and discover the most authentic, green and spiritual side of Cyprus.
The Troodos Mountains hold one of the greatest concentrations of Byzantine art in the world. Between the 11th and 16th centuries, rural and monastic communities built small churches in these remote valleys which, protected by distance and by simple timber roofs, were covered inside with frescoes of extraordinary quality. Their isolation saved them from destruction and kept them in use even under Latin rule by the Lusignans and later under the Ottomans. Ten of them were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1985 (with an extension in 2001). Kykkos Monastery, the richest and most influential in Cyprus, was founded in the 11th century and keeps an icon of the Virgin that tradition attributes to Saint Luke the Evangelist. The detailed history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of the island: the last divided capital in Europe, with its star-shaped Venetian walls and the Green Line crossing Ledra Street, and the Troodos Mountains, a refuge of copper, monasteries and painted Byzantine churches.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Troodos Mountains are no ordinary range: geologically, they are one of the most studied places on the planet. They are an outstanding example of an ophiolite, a fragment of ancient oceanic crust and of the Earth's mantle that rose to the surface millions of years ago. Because of this, rocks that normally lie kilometres deep beneath the sea are exposed in Troodos, and that draws geologists from all over the world. The same origin also explains how rich the area is in minerals, above all copper.
Copper shaped the island's destiny from prehistoric times. Cyprus, whose name many scholars link to the Latin word for copper, cuprum, was one of the great centres for producing and exporting this metal in Antiquity, and much of it came from the mines on the foothills of Troodos. These deposits were already being worked in the Bronze Age, more than four thousand years ago, and Cypriot copper was traded across the whole eastern Mediterranean.
The slopes and valleys were covered in dense pine and cedar forests, which supplied wood for smelting the ore and for building ships. That mix of metal and forest made Troodos an economic engine for the island from very early on, even though its people stayed scattered across small rural mountain communities.
From the 7th century onwards, Arab raids repeatedly struck the coastal towns of Cyprus, and many communities moved inland to the safety of the mountains. The remote, hard-to-reach valleys of Troodos became a refuge for Orthodox Christian life, and monasteries and small rural churches flourished there.
The most important of these was Kykkos Monastery, founded towards the end of the 11th century, in the time of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos. According to tradition, a hermit named Isaiah healed the daughter of a Byzantine governor. As his reward he received an icon of the Virgin attributed to Saint Luke the Evangelist, and the monastery was built around it. Over the centuries Kykkos became the richest and most powerful monastery in Cyprus, with vast estates and great spiritual influence, and it still holds that position today.
These monasteries and the farming communities around them built the famous painted churches between the 11th and 16th centuries. They were modest single-nave buildings designed to withstand the mountain climate. That is why many were later given a second, steeply pitched wooden roof to protect them from rain and snow, which gives them their unmistakable look of an Alpine barn. Those simple roofs hid a treasure: walls covered entirely in frescoes.
What makes the Troodos churches unique is the extraordinary quality and continuity of their frescoes. Between the 11th and 16th centuries, and in some cases even later, their walls were gradually covered with murals showing scenes from the lives of Christ and the Virgin, portraits of saints, liturgical cycles and donors. Together they form one of the best surviving overviews of how Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting developed in the eastern Mediterranean.
Some preserve highly refined frescoes from the Komnenian period (11th-12th centuries), such as those in Panagia tou Araka, dated to around 1192 and considered among the most complete examples of Komnenian art. Others show the later development under the Latin rule of the Lusignans (13th-15th centuries), when Cypriot Byzantine art absorbed Western and Italian influences, visible for example in the Church of the Archangel Michael in Pedoulas (late 15th century). That these Orthodox communities kept painting Byzantine churches under Catholic and later Ottoman rulers is a testament to the cultural and religious resilience of Greek Cyprus.
Isolation was their great ally. While many churches in the towns were altered, destroyed or rebuilt, these mountain chapels stayed in use and almost untouched for centuries. That is why they still hold ensembles that have been lost elsewhere.
Besides its churches, Troodos has been wine country for thousands of years. Vines have been grown in Cyprus since Antiquity, and the high slopes and climate of Troodos produce some of the island's best wines. The most famous is Commandaria, a sweet dessert wine made in villages of the region from grapes dried in the sun. Its name comes from the Grande Commanderie, the estate held in Cyprus during the Middle Ages by the military order of the Knights Hospitaller (of Saint John). Many consider it one of the oldest named wines in the world still in production.
Under Lusignan rule and then Venetian rule, the mountains remained a rural world of farmers, vineyards, olive groves and forests. The Ottoman conquest in 1571 changed little of the essentials of village life. People went on growing vines, producing copper in the mines and keeping their Orthodox churches, which the Ottomans tolerated under their system of religious communities. Copper and other minerals continued to be mined on the foothills of Troodos, and this carried on into the 20th century.
This is how the Troodos villages kept a traditional way of life that is now part of their appeal: stone and timber houses, cobbled squares, family wineries, local crafts and mountain cooking with trout, halloumi, cured meats and sweets such as soutzoukos.
In the 20th century, Troodos and its great Kykkos Monastery played a prominent role in the political history of Cyprus. Michail Mouskos came from Kykkos Monastery. He went on to become archbishop under the name Makarios III and, in 1960, the first president of the independent Republic of Cyprus. Makarios was a central and controversial figure in the Greek Cypriot struggle, first for enosis (union with Greece) and later for independence, and he dominated Cypriot politics for almost two decades.
During the armed campaign of the EOKA organisation against British rule in the 1950s, the forests and rugged terrain of the Troodos Mountains sheltered the guerrillas, including their leader, Georgios Grivas. The mountain landscape that had protected monks from raids centuries earlier became a stage for resistance once again.
After independence in 1960, and above all after the Turkish invasion of 1974 that divided the island, all of Troodos lay in the area controlled by the Republic of Cyprus. Makarios died in 1977 and, as he had wished, was buried on Mount Throni near Kykkos, in a mausoleum with sweeping views over the mountains where he had been trained as a monk. His tomb is now a place of pilgrimage and a regular stop for people visiting the monastery.
The outstanding value of the Troodos churches won worldwide recognition in 1985, when UNESCO added a first group of nine painted churches from the region to the World Heritage List. In 2001 a tenth was added: the Church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour (Sotiras) in Palaichori. The ensemble was recognised as one of the largest concentrations of churches and monasteries of the former Byzantine Empire, with a wealth of mural painting that offers a unique overview of Byzantine and post-Byzantine art in Cyprus.
Today, that recognition sits alongside the mountains' other attractions. Troodos is a destination for religious pilgrimage (Kykkos, the churches, the tomb of Makarios). It is also a protected natural area, with its National Forest Park and trails, and a wine region with the Krasochoria Wine Route. On top of that, it is a cool escape from the heat of the coast, with its small and surprising ski resort on Mount Olympus.
The mountain villages have embraced agritourism and the care of their heritage, and many of the churches have been carefully restored. Travelling through Troodos means discovering a different Cyprus from the one on the beaches. It is older, greener and more spiritual, and under its humble wooden roofs it hides some of the most beautiful Byzantine frescoes in the world.
