A Traveler's Account of Nicosia: "Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960" by Rita Severis

The following painting by Tristran Ellis and description from Rita Severis in her book Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960 portray the moat immediately outside the iconic Venetian fortification of Nicosia. It has transformed from one of the three original gates to the city into an outdoor theater area and sculpture park.

·      "In the panoramic watercolour of ‘The Walls of Nicosia’, in which a string of camels plods away from the city and a British officer on his horse supervises work in the arid land outside the walls, Ellis was primarily concerned with the atmospheric effects. A couple of simple huts and a minaret are the only buildings visible inside the fortifications, and the city walls recede towards the distant mountains. The use of colour is limited, giving greater emphasis to the light. Local red and blue tints pick out features and bright expanses of wash for the mountains accentuate their uneven height with the five-finger peaks dominating the centre. The landscape is dusty, the stillness suggesting a dazzlingly hot day in the desert. The British officer as the colonial master, a few local workmen, the ancient wall and bastion – these elements place the painting in an imperial context and within the sequence of successive colonizations of Cyprus – Lusignan, Venetian, Ottoman, and British." (R. Severis)

Severis, R. 2000. Travelling Artists in Cyprus: 1700-1960. London: Philip Wilson Publishers.

A Traveler's Account of Nicosia: John Thomson, 1878 (cont.)

More comparison photos from John Thomson's visit in 1878:

Channel Squadron Gate, Nicosia

"Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, stands in the centre of the island, on the Plain of the Mesorea, four hundred feet above the sea. It is connected with Larnaca by a carriage-road, which has recently been repaired and rendered available for an omnibus that piles daily between the fort and the capital. This road runs direct to the Channel Squadron Gate (so named by British blue-jackets when they took possession).

The wall and gates are strongly built of stone, and are in good preservation, although traces of neglect and decay are to be met with everywhere around. The moslems, as a military people, have made languid and fitful attempts to keep the ramparts in repair, while within the walls they appear to have left nothing worth the cost of a siege.

The air was tainted close to the gateway, for animals were being slaughtered in an enclosed space hard by. The poor, make-shift abodes in the immediate neighborhood are strangely at variance with relics of the ancient magnificence of Nicosia; and the motley crowd that now-a-days passes to and fro through the massive archway, would form a striking contrast to the chivalrous bands that followed in the train of the Lusignan Princes when the town became a royal residence.

A writer of the fourteenth century states that the nobility of Cyprus were, at that time, the richest in the world. But they have passed away, and their wealth and fame are almost forgotten. What of their descendants? The writer heard a poor muleteer (a man of the fine physique and courtly bearing) boast that he was a descendant of one of the most noble families of Cyprus." (Thomson, 11)

On the Ramparts, Nicosia

"It is doubtful whether the ramparts here depicted formed originally a part of the substantial fortifications constructed by the venetians in olden days and still surrounding the town. The pierced wall looks flimsy, and its weakness and insufficiently have evidently been at one time concealed beneath a coating of plaster. For all that, the multitude of empty, harmless embrasures present a formidable front, when we view it from the plain.

Strong as these old battlements undoubtedly are – battlements which, in 1570, enabled the Venetians to withstand a seven weeks’ siege – they would hardly bear the brunt of a bombardment for as many hours by modern artillery. The road from Nicosia may be seen winding across the plain and disappearing over an eminence. The land on both sides of this road was once famed for its fertility, and yet, although it is still most productive, only a patch of the ground here and there is under cultivation. Vast tracts lie fallow, overgrown by thistles, shrubs, and stunted herbage, and affording fodder to flocks of sheep and goats. However, these tracts, as they supply pasturage, can hardly be called waste land. And a few years hence may become the richest farms in the Levant." (Thomson, 16)

Thomson, J. 1985 (1878). Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878: Volumes 1 and 2. Trigraph Ltd. 

A Traveler's Account of Nicosia: John Thomson, 1878

John Thomson arrived the year the British arrived on the island (1878) with a camera. He published his photographic journal of his travels in a book called Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878. I have taken comparison photographs to a few that he included in his book along with the description he provides for each during his visit:

St. Sophia, Nicosia

"The Cathedral of St. Sophia, now used as a mosque, is a noble edifice, which carries one back to the period of the Lusignan princes, whose mutilated monuments may be seen within its walls. The lofty, pillared interior is approached through three arched portals, richly sculptured and pointed. These portals have escaped the rough usage which has wrecked other parts of the building, and (as may be gathered from the photograph) the finely-sculptured windows have also been preserved. But as for the splendid interior, it has lost its rich decorations; and its carved work and pillars are now daubed with gaudy-coloured paint, or with a whitewash which possibly typifies the purity of the faith of the Prophet.

It is fortunate that Moslem economy, or, perhaps, a lack of fanatical zeal, has preserved to use so much of this fine specimen of early Gothic architecture. The tower, which once crowned the edifice has given place to galleried minarets; the old sonorous summons of the cathedral bell has been exchanged for muezzins, which each morning and evening call the faithful to prayer." (Thomson, 14)

St. Nicholas, Nicosia

"Hard by the Cathedral of St. Sophia stands a church once dedicated to St. Nicholas but now used as a granary, whose richly sculpted portal, the subject of this photograph, is one of the finest examples of its kind to be found in Cyprus. Nicosia, when at the height of its prosperity in the fourteenth century, boasted no less than two hundred and fifty chapels and churches; but the work of demolition has since been so successfully pursued, that only two of three edifices now remain to testify to the wealth once lavished on their building and decoration.

In strolling through the town, one may readily perceive that the churches, very shortly after the Turkish conquest, were used as quarries, and long continued to supply building materials to generations of Cypriotes. When these resources became at last exhausted, as no labour was forthcoming to procure stone in the hills, the islanders fell back upon the old sun-dried brick which figures so largely in the ramshackle architecture of the capital. What could be more striking than the contrast of the two such styles as have been presented face to face in this picture? The one Gothic, the other Turk mud-ine if we may so denominate it! In the latter case, however, nature was made the most of the projecting rafters, and the roof is garnished with curious herbage. Beyond, in the distance, is a mound of debris. Many such mounds are to be met with during an hour’s march through the streets and lanes of Nicosia, and the nature of their contents, when some inquiring spirit shall one day open them, will throw light, if not on the early history of the capital, at any rate on the sanitary condition of the locality." (Thomson, 15)

Thomson, J. 1985 (1878). Through Cyprus with the Camera in the Autumn of 1878: Volumes 1 and 2. Trigraph Ltd.