Nicosia Guide Cyprus

SOUTH NICOSIA, depending on whom you ask and how many incorporated suburbs you include, today has between 190,000 and 270,000 inhabitants. Despite the relatively small population, it's a sprawling, amorphous, modern city that makes a poor first impression.

The dust and heat -on average 2 degrees C higher than on the coast -beginning in April and lasting until October, are prostrating, grit corning in equal measure from the prevailing winds and nearby building sites. Nicosia's inland setting, near the western extreme of the Mesaoria, is prone to earthquakes and flash-flooding from the river Pedhieos, and it is otherwise not naturally favoured except in its near-equidistance from the important coastal towns. Since early Byzantine times every ruler has designated the place capital virtually by default, because the island's shore defences were poor, its harbours exposed to attack.

Arrival, orientation, transport and information

Whether you approach from the south along the motorway from Larnaca or Limassol, or in a more leisurely fashion from the Troodhos foothills, arrival in Nicosia is not a thrilling prospect (the international airport has languished in the dead zone, used as UNFICYP headquarters since 1974, its ultimate fate subject to a final peace setdement). You negotiate seemingly interminable suburbs indis- tinguishable from those of any other Mediterranean or Middle Eastern city, until suddenly thrust into the ring system of streets mirroring the Venetian bulwarks. Most of the bus terminals are a short distance from the ramparts, or even on them.

The municipality has turned parts of the Venetian walls and moat into car parks -the best areas are the moat between the D' Avila and Constanza bastions, with the top of the Tripoli bastion a runner-up; plans are afoot to build a multi-storey car park in the moat. Pay-and-display tickets from the vending machine start at C£O.50 for two hours; on nearby streets there are meters which cost C£O.20 per hour, but occasionally C£O.40 or C£O.50 in very high-use areas. Regulations are enforced Monday to Saturday, 7am to 7pm, in theory. Alternatively, you can use remoter, but cheaper, privately run car parks in the new city away from the walls; for example, leaving the Al motorwayand entering the built-up area, keep an eye out,just past the Cyprus Airways headquarters, for a large car park on the right, before the new-town Woolworths -C£O.60 for the whole day. The only fairly reliable fee-free street spaces in the old city are near the Archbishop's Palace, or outside the walls in a very few streets south of the Constanza bastion.

Nicosia Orientation

Most of what a visitor will want to see in south Nicosia lies within the old city walls. Getting to grips with the main streets there is made difficult by the fact that the longest one, the ring boulevard linking the bastions, changes names no less than four times. The busiest entrance to the old town is at Platia Eleftherias, giving onto pedestrianized and commercialized Udhras, while in the opposite direction Evagorou leads out to the new town beyond the walls. This is somewhat more orderly but by no means grid-regular, and the ring road just outside the moat changes identity just as often as its counterpart inside the . walls; Leoforos Arkhiepiskopou Makariou, perpendicular to Evagorou, is the longest and glitziest boulevard, headed out towards the A1 motorway.

Nicosia City transport and Information

Nicosia has an urban bus network of about twenty lines, straggling off through the new town into further-flung suburbs; services run at half-hourly intervals between 5.30am and 7 or 8pm, twice as often at peak periods. They're , cheap enough at about C£O.40, but you probably won't use them unless you want to visit a distant embassy or cultural centre. Blundy put, no self-respecting Greek Cypriot will be caught dead on a bus or (worse) walking, and Nicosian teenagers more or less obligatorily get a car for their eighteenth birthday. The central terminal for city buses is on Plana Solomou, beside the Tripoli bastion. Full information is available here, and route and city maps are sporadically to be had from the CTO at AristokyProu 11 (Mon-Fri 8.30am-4pm, Sat : 8.30am-2pm). This is the general enquiries office; for more unusual requests try the world headquarters of the CTO at Leoforos Lemesou 19 (Tel 22331644), just past the end of Arkhiepiskopou Makarlou.