Few small islands have been fought over, prized and passed between empires as often as Cyprus. Sitting where Europe, Asia and Africa almost touch, it has been a copper mine, a goddess’s birthplace, a crusader kingdom and a British colony — and you can walk through every one of those chapters in a single afternoon. Here’s the whole story, kept short.
Stone Age beginnings (before 3900 BC)
People were living on Cyprus more than 11,000 years ago. The remarkable Neolithic village of Khirokitia — round stone houses on a hillside, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site — dates back some 9,000 years and is one of the best-preserved prehistoric settlements in the eastern Mediterranean. Even the world’s oldest known pet cat was found buried beside a human here, thousands of years before the Egyptians kept them.
The island that copper named (c. 3900–1050 BC)
Cyprus sits on rich copper ore, and in the Bronze Age that made it famous. The island traded copper across the Mediterranean, and many scholars believe the very word “copper” comes from Cyprus (Latin cuprum, “metal of Cyprus”). Mycenaean Greeks settled from around 1200 BC, planting the Greek language and culture that have shaped the island ever since.
Empires come and go (1050 BC – AD 330)
For a thousand years Cyprus was a prize passed between Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians, until Alexander the Great’s successors, the Egyptian Ptolemies, absorbed it. Then came Rome: under the Romans, Paphos became a glittering capital floored with astonishing mosaics you can still see today. Tradition holds Cyprus was the first place governed by a Christian ruler, after Paul and Barnabas preached here in the first century AD.
Byzantine centuries and a passing king (AD 330–1191)
When the Roman world split, Cyprus spent nearly 800 years in the Christian Byzantine empire, dotting the island with painted churches — the frescoed chapels of the Troodos mountains are its living legacy. Then, in 1191, Richard the Lionheart, blown off course on the Third Crusade, conquered the island, married his queen in Limassol, and promptly sold it on.
Knights, Venetians and Ottomans (1192–1878)
For nearly 300 years the French Lusignan dynasty ruled Cyprus as a crusader kingdom of castles and cathedrals. Venice took over in 1489 and ringed Nicosia and Famagusta with mighty star-shaped walls. In 1571 the Ottomans conquered the island and ruled for three centuries — the era that added mosques, hammams and much of the island’s village food and craft traditions.
The British, independence and division (1878–today)
Britain took over the administration in 1878 and annexed Cyprus in 1914 (that’s why they drive on the left). Cyprus became an independent republic in 1960. In 1974, after a coup and a Turkish military intervention, the island was divided — a “Green Line” still separates the Republic of Cyprus in the south from the Turkish-occupied north, and Nicosia remains the world’s last divided capital. Since 2004 the Republic has been in the European Union, adopting the euro in 2008.