From Lefkosia, we worked our way back to Larnaca, but we made a couple of stops along the way. The first was Agios Sozomenos, about 20 kilometres south of Lefkosia, and just a kilometre or so from the Green Line buffer zone between north and south Cyprus. Agios Sozomeno is a village that was abandoned during the 1960s due to intracommunal violence between Greek and Turkish residents, and so lies in ruins today. I had read that it is an interesting place to visit, and indeed it was.
Most of the buildings, presumably houses, are built from mud brick.
But there are also remains of an old stone Latin church, which apparently was actually never finished and dates from the 15th century.
Within the remains of the Latin church there is a small shrine that people evidently visit with some frequency.
Next to the Latin church there is also a Greek church, which is still maintained, it would seem.
The ruined village is interesting and picturesque (a professional photo shoot was beginning as we were leaving!), but also sad in that it is another reminder of the ethnic/religious division and violence Cyprus experienced and is still experiencing.
Diana fell asleep as we left Agios Sozomenos so I made an executive decision to leave the freeway again, this time to head up a mountain to the Stavrovouni Monastery. The monastery is an impressive building that is visible from a long way away high on the summit of the mountain. Halfway up or so, after a lot of switch-backing, there is a pullout with a view. You can see the monastery up on the mountain in the picture below.
And this photo gives you a sense of the climb we had already done.
Unfortunately, women are not allowed in the monastery, which bothered me enough to decide not to go in, even though Diana encouraged me to. Instead, we visited the little chapel that people of any gender are welcome in.
It was too bad about the monastery itself, but the drive up was worth it just for the views.
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