The Cyprus Museum
I’ve been aware for a long time that Cyprus has a long and varied history, partly due to the it’s very strategic location between Europe and the Middle East, something I’d just not thought about in my 3 months here, until I went to Paphos last week (I’ll come back to this in a bit).
From a young age I’ve been interested in history – specifically the ancient kind, which I went on to study when I did a Classics A-Level. My favourite period is the Hellenistic and Roman periods and few centuries either side of them, periods in which Cyprus played a role, and in some cases a very important one.
Some pottery
Some Minoan writing
Clay Trumpets
I have also had the chance to study the Minoan and Mycenaean periods which until I was 16, I had never heard of, but only having visited museums in northern Europe, there are few or no artefacts, from that period. This is where the museum had a lot of value for me as there area number of things from this period in the museum, stuff I’d only seen in books. But the Museum houses archaeology from the 10th millennium BCE all the way to the early Byzantine period. So there’s around 11000 years of history there to have a look at and it took me 2 hours to look around, there’s plenty to take a look at.
Just around 10,000 years young figurine
There are rooms specifically for different types of artefacts, some for statues, jewellry, furniture, tombs, pottery, figurines etc etc. There is quite a lot put into a fairly small museum.
Currently there’s an exhibition in place which runs until 30th of November called Nea Paphos – 50 years of polish excavations. This exhibition showed the different artefacts excavated in Nea Paphos, I visited this exact place last week, it was really interesting to see what had been found there.
In general there is an incredible collection, with almost everything within from Cyprus, although a fair few objects are from an unknown location. The artefacts come from both sides of the island, as some of the most important archaeological sites are in the occupied area such as Salamis.
Entry is €4,50
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