I recently read Archduke Louis Salvator of Austria's account of his visit to Nicosia in 1873. The following is Preface to his book which details his first impressions of the Ottoman capital:
"When, after passing a pleasant range of hills, Levkosia first bursts upon the sight, with her slender palms and minarets, seated in a desert plain, a chain of picturesque mountains as the background, it is like a dream of the Arabian Nights realized – a bouquet of orange gardens and palm trees in a country without verdure, an oasis encircled with walls framed by human hands.
Great is the contrast between the town and its surroundings, and greater still between the objects within the city. There are Venetian fortifications by the side of Gothic edifices surmounted by the Crescent, on antique Classic soil. Turks, Greeks, and Armenians, dwell intermingled, bitter enemies at heart, and united solely by their love for the hand of their birth." (9)
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| View from Fikardou to toward Nicosia |
The description provided here by Salvator is beautifully written, but modern Nicosia leaves little trace of the oasis described here. Movement outside the city walls as residence began after the British took control of the island in 1878 and exploded as the city polarized into Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities between 1963 and 1974. The Venetian walls, Ottoman minarets, and palms have been engulfed by modern office buildings and sprawling suburbs and the capital that was once a place of coexistence is ripped by an undulating line of division that separates two distinct communities who speak a different language and live in the same, but separate capital city. The intimate streets and eclectic mix of monuments remain, for which I am appreciative during my daily walks in the Old City, but the life around them has been moved outward to the contemporary capital of Cyprus.
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