If Ayia Napa is the party, Protaras is the calm. A few kilometres from its lively neighbour, this seaside resort in southeastern Cyprus offers the same turquoise water and the same golden sand, but at a slower pace, made for families, couples and anyone looking to unwind by the sea. Its emblem is Fig Tree Bay, a cove of clear water and fine sand that appears year after year on lists of Europe's best beaches, with an islet you can swim to and a fig tree that gives it its name.
Protaras is a string of picture-postcard coves set along a coastline of low cliffs and crystal-clear water. Besides Fig Tree Bay, it hides gems like Konnos Bay, a sheltered bay among pine trees already within the Cape Greco area. Inland, the small white church of Profitis Ilias crowns a rocky hill reached by a long staircase, with views over the whole area, and when night falls the dancing fountains put on a show of water, light and music that is very popular with families.
This guide explores Protaras with a practical, warm eye: which are the best coves and how much a sunbed costs, how to get to Cape Greco and Konnos Bay, what to do with kids (the aquarium, the dancing fountains), where to eat good fish and how to get around without your own car. Protaras doesn't try to dazzle with excess: it simply offers some of the most beautiful water in the Mediterranean in a calm, family-friendly setting, and that's why it wins over everyone who discovers it.
Protaras is an essentially modern destination: until well into the 20th century it was nothing more than a stretch of uninhabited coast belonging to the municipality of Paralimni, a farming village inland in the Kokkinochoria ('the red villages', named for their fertile red soil). The Protaras coastline had no permanent settlement and was used for fishing and grazing. Everything changed from 1974: the division of Cyprus and the loss of Famagusta and its tourist district of Varosha, which ended up on the Turkish-occupied side, pushed the south of the island to urgently develop new coastal destinations. Together with Ayia Napa, Protaras went in just a few decades from untouched coast to a resort area of hotels and apartments, betting on a quieter, more family-oriented tourism than its neighbour. The modern name and development sit alongside ancient traces in the area, such as the city-kingdom of Leukolla, which tradition places in these parts. 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) →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Although Protaras is a modern tourist destination today, the coast it sits on has echoes reaching back to Antiquity. Tradition and some ancient sources place a small port called Leukolla in this part of south-eastern Cyprus, linked to the world of the Cypriot city-kingdoms of the Bronze Age and classical Antiquity. Historians connect it with nearby Salamis, the great city-kingdom that dominated the east of the island, for which this stretch of coast would have served as a secondary anchorage.
The most frequently cited episode links Leukolla with King Evagoras I of Salamis, one of the great figures of classical Cyprus (late 5th and early 4th century BC). According to the accounts, Evagoras's fleet used or fought in the waters of this area during his wars for control of the island and his struggle with the Persian Empire. The details are fragmentary, as you would expect from a period with so little surviving documentation, but they are a reminder that these coves, now given over to leisure, were the setting for the seafaring and conflicts of the ancient Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago.
Beyond these traces, the Protaras area and the municipality of Paralimni it belongs to remained within the orbit of eastern Cyprus throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, shaped first by the proximity of Salamis and later by Famagusta. Unlike those great cities, however, the Protaras coast stayed unpopulated and undeveloped for centuries, something that would only change in very recent times.
The real historical roots of Protaras are not on the coast but inland, in the village of Paralimni, to which the coastal area belongs. Paralimni is a traditional town in the Kokkinochoria region, 'the red villages', named after the deep reddish colour of its soil, which is extraordinarily fertile and famous throughout Cyprus for its crops, especially potatoes. For centuries, life in this area revolved around farming that red earth, raising livestock and a close-knit rural community centred on its churches.
The name Paralimni means 'beside the lake', after a nearby seasonal lake that filled in winter and dried up in summer. It was a modest farming village inland, far from the sea and from tourism, like so many others in traditional Cyprus. The coastal strip that is now Protaras was used for fishing and grazing, with no permanent settlement: just a few chapels, animal pens and tracks.
Through the centuries of Venetian (until 1571), Ottoman (1571-1878) and British (from 1878) rule, this part of south-eastern Cyprus remained deeply rural. The island's major events — conquests, changes of sovereignty, uprisings — felt distant in an area devoted to the land. Nothing suggested that, in the second half of the 20th century, those overlooked beaches would become one of Cyprus's most popular tourist destinations. Paralimni, the farming village, would end up as the administrative centre of one of the country's most prosperous coastal areas.
As with neighbouring Ayia Napa, the modern history of Protaras is defined by 1974, the most dramatic year in contemporary Cyprus. In July that year, a coup backed by the Greek military junta overthrew President Makarios with the aim of uniting the island with Greece. Turkey responded with a military intervention that occupied the northern third of Cyprus, and the island was divided by a ceasefire line — the 'Green Line' — that still separates it today: to the north, the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (recognised only by Turkey); to the south, the Republic of Cyprus, with a Greek Cypriot majority.
The division had enormous consequences for the east of the island. Famagusta, the major tourist and commercial city, and its modern district of Varosha — one of the fashionable destinations of the Mediterranean in the 1960s and 1970s — ended up on the side occupied by Turkey. Varosha was evacuated and sealed off, becoming a ghost town that has remained closed ever since. Overnight, the Republic of Cyprus lost its main coastal tourist centre.
The south of the island urgently needed new destinations to replace the lost Famagusta and keep the economy and tourism going. Ayia Napa was chosen first, and alongside it the Protaras coast, which until then had been little more than an untouched strip of the Paralimni municipality. And so the tragedy of Cyprus's division was, paradoxically, the origin of tourism in Protaras: beaches ignored for centuries were suddenly put on the map out of historical necessity.
From the mid-1970s, and above all in the 1980s and 1990s, the Protaras coast changed at a dizzying pace. Hotels, apartments, restaurants and a seafront promenade sprang up along the empty strip of the Paralimni municipality, and the turquoise-water beaches — led by Fig Tree Bay — began to attract international tourists, mainly from Britain and northern Europe. Within a couple of decades, Protaras went from untouched coastline to an established seaside resort.
Unlike Ayia Napa, which became famous for its nightlife and young, party atmosphere, Protaras aimed from the start at quieter, family-oriented tourism. It positioned itself as the place for holidays as a couple or with children, for postcard beaches and relaxing by the sea, leaving the partying to Ayia Napa a few kilometres away. That focus on calm and family became its hallmark and the key to its success.
Over time, Protaras added attractions designed for that audience: the Ocean Aquarium, the dancing fountains show, the little tourist train, seafront walks and an increasingly varied range of accommodation, from budget apartments to luxury resorts. The small church of Profitis Ilias, perched on its hill, and the coves of nearby Cape Greco completed the offer of a town that combines nature, beach and family fun.
Today's Protaras is a mature tourist destination that has managed to keep its quiet, family-friendly identity while tourism in south-eastern Cyprus kept on growing. It is the laid-back counterpart to Ayia Napa: the same turquoise waters and golden sand, but a more relaxed atmosphere, aimed at families, couples and travellers looking for rest rather than partying. Its beaches, headed by the award-winning Fig Tree Bay, rank among the most highly rated in Europe, and its coastline of crystal-clear coves is its greatest treasure.
The natural surroundings of Cape Greco, just next door, add trails, cliffs, sea caves, the Blue Lagoon and sheltered coves such as Konnos Bay, making it easy to combine beach time with nature. The town has steadily broadened its offer with family attractions — aquarium, dancing fountains — and accommodation in every category, always keeping the easy-going character that sets it apart.
Like the whole region, Protaras lives in the shadow of Cyprus's recent history: a few kilometres away lies the Green Line that has divided the island since 1974, with Famagusta and the sealed-off Varosha on the other side. That proximity is a reminder that the thriving tourism on this coast was born, in large part, from the tragedy of division. Today, though, Protaras offers itself to travellers simply as what it is: one of the spots with the most beautiful waters in the Mediterranean, a place to slow down, swim in postcard coves and enjoy the sun in peace.
