The flag was adopted at independence in 1960, as the result of a design competition. The winner was a Turkish Cypriot painter whose design was chosen by Makarios III, the President of the Republic.

The Facebook group says the Karpas donkeys “are the symbol of Cyprus and it is our responsibility to protect them”. The messages which are posted in both Greek and Turkish, are a new gesture of unity on the island, whose communities remain divided by a UN-patrolled buffer zone.

A group of Greek and Turkish Cypriots rallied on a beach in the Karpas Peninsula on 13 April to “Save the Cyprus Donkey”. The Karpas donkeys are a legacy of the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, when Greek Cypriot farmers fled the area, leaving their animals behind, the AFP news agency reports.

This article was reported on BBC News, 22nd April 08.

The seeds of the carob were used as weights measure for gold, hence the name ‘carat’. In other countries, the seeds have been ground and used as a coffee substitute, but here in Cyprus, the ground seeds are made into Carob Honey or ‘charoupomelo’, a sticky, rich confection rather like molasses in consistency and delicious when it is enjoyed with bread or yoghurt and also used to flavour milkshakes. The honey can be taken a stage further by kneading and stretching until it becomes a golden caramel colour and can be eaten as chewy toffee ‘pastelli’, often covered with sesame seeds.

Technically a legume, the carob is probably best known as a popular cocoa substitute, probably because it has only 1/3 the calories and is virtually fat free! The ground-up pods are used for this and contain important vitamins and minerals and are used in many health foods. The pods have also been widely used as animal feed and are relished by goats, pigs, cattle and rabbits, with carob flour being used in dog biscuits.

Remnants of the carob’s place in Cyprus history can be found in Limassol next to the Medieval Castle near the old port. The Carob Mill played a vital part in Cyprus economy of the time and the carob became one of the islands’ most important exports. It became known locally as ‘Black Gold’ and the mill which was originally built as warehouses, became the production centre for carobs where they would be collected, separated into the sub products, and then ground before being carried by donkey to the port nearby for global distribution. The Mill is now a fascinating collection of restaurants, cafes and shops, and old mill machinery can be found dating from 19th century.

There are also the smaller religious groups of Muslims, the Anglicans, Roman and Latin Christians, Maronites, Armenian Orthodox, Greek Evangelics, Jews and others including New Life International Church Cyprus (Community of Hope), Seventh-Day Adventist Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Religion – as epitomised by the Orthodox Church across many centuries – is very firmly woven into the fabric of Cyprus society reflecting its power, influence and dominance in the life of the country. This contrasts with the UK, where diverse religious creeds are arguably in greater competition with each other for the religious affiliations of its people.

The religious practices of the Cypriot Orthodox Church compare and contrast significantly to those found within the diverse communities of the broadly Christian type churches of the UK. The service does not use a choir. The balcony, or choir loft, found in most churches is reserved for women and is called the ginekonitis. On the ground level of the church, men usually also sit on one side and women on the other.

The Church of Cyprus is an autocephalous church in the Orthodox tradition using the liturgy of mainland Greece. It recognized the seniority and prestige of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople, while retaining complete administrative autonomy under its own archbishop. The Great Schism, as the split between Catholic and Orthodox became known, had major consequences for the Church of Cyprus. Under Lusignan and Venetian rule, the Church of Cyprus was pressured to recognize the authority of the Roman pope. The imposed Roman hierarchy attempted to remould the Church of Cyprus in the image of the Western church. Under the Muslim Ottomans, Cypriots were no longer considered schismatics, but merely unbelievers and followers of an inferior religion.

As such they were allowed considerable autonomy, and the archbishop was the officially recognized secular as well as religious leader of his community

Under British rule there was an attempt to secularize all public institutions, but this move was bitterly opposed by church authorities, who used the conflict with the state to gain leadership of the Greek nationalist movement against colonial rule. At independence Archbishop Makarios III, a young, Western-educated former monk, was elected president of the Republic, holding this position until his death in 1977. His successor, Archbishop Chrysostomos, was still head of the Church of Cyprus at the beginning of the 1990s. He was a conservative leader, both in religious and political matters, well-suited for a church that had never undergone reforms similar to those instituted by the Second Vatican Council for the Roman Catholic Church.

The church had long been composed of four episcopal sees: the archbishopric of Nicosia, and the Metropolitanates of Paphos, Kition, and Kyrenia. New Metropolitanates were created by Makarios in 1973 for Limassol and Morphou, with a suffragan (or assistant) bishop in Salamis under the archbishop. A bishop had to be a graduate of the Orthodox theological seminary in Greece and be at least thirty years of age. Since Orthodox bishops were sworn to a vow of celibacy and parish clergy were usually married, bishops were recruits from monasteries rather than parish churches. Bishops were not appointed by the archbishop, but, like him, were elected through a system granting representation to laymen, other bishops, abbots, and regular clergy.

Individual churches, monasteries, dioceses, and charitable educational institutions organized by the Church of Cyprus were independent legal persons enjoying such rights and obligations as holding property. In exchange for many church lands acquired by the government, the government assumed responsibility for church salaries. Parish clergy, traditionally married men chosen by their fellow villagers, were sent for brief training before ordination. In the twentieth century, modernisers, most notably Archbishop Makarios, were instrumental in strengthening the quality and training of priests at the Cypriot seminary in Nicosia

The monasteries of Cyprus had always been very important to the Church of Cyprus. By the twentieth century many had long lain in ruins, but their properties were among the most important holdings of the church, the island’s largest landowner. Although the number of monks decreased in the postwar era, in the early 1990s there were at least ten active monasteries in the government-controlled areas

In the Orthodox church, ritual was to a great extent the centre of the church’s activity, for Orthodox doctrine emphasises ‘the mystery of God’s grace rather than salvation through works and knowledge’. Seven sacraments are recognized: baptism in infancy, followed by confirmation with consecrated oil, penance, the Eucharist, matrimony, ordination, and unction in times of sickness or when near death.

Formal services are lengthy and colourful, with singing, incense, and elaborate vestments according to the occasion for the presiding priest. Statues are forbidden, but the veneration of icons, located on the church’s walls and often covered with offerings of the faithful, is highly developed. Easter is the focus of the church year, closing the Lenten fasting with an Easter Eve vigil and procession. Marriage is a highly ritualized occasion. Formal divorce proceedings are required for broken engagements that have been ratified by the church. The wedding sponsors play an important role in the family, for they usually act as godparents of all children born of that marriage union.

Religious observance varies. In traditional rural villages, women attend services more frequently than men, and elderly family members are usually responsible for fulfilling religious duties on behalf of the whole family. Church attendance is less frequent in urban areas and among educated Cypriots. For much of the population, religion focuses on rituals at home, veneration of icons, and observance of certain feast days of the Orthodox calendar.

Details of non-Orthodox church services are published in the English-language newspaper The Cyprus Mail / Sunday Mail.

One of the most influential and powerful nations the world has ever witnessed, Greece boasted an extensive, diverse, and polytheistic religion. Greek legends are (and were) so engaging and well-known that the actual word “mythology” is derived from their language, the world “mythologia” having been coined by the philosopher Plato to distinguish between imaginative accounts of divine activites and factual description of events.

The earliest Greeks invented the gods and stories about them to explain natural phenomena, which, of course, they had no way of understanding. As the Greek civilisation expanded the beliefs of other people were mixed in with those that already existed, causing a new, unique, and somewhat multicultural religion.

The range of Greek gods is known as a “pantheon”, and includes such famous deities as Zeus – King of the Gods and Ruler of the Skies; Aphrodite – Goddess of Love; and Apollo – God of the Sun, Light and the Arts. Apart from recounting the activites of the gods, Greek mythology also detailed the adventures of heroes – usually brave men and grief-stricken women (it should be noted that the Greeks were one of the first cultures to develop antiheroes – characters who display bad qualities or vices yet fight for good) – and traced the outcomes of wars and other special events.

Although the Greek gods and heroes are usually what people think of when they hear the term “Greek mythology”, they are not the only aspects of the legends. “Chaos” is a term also invented by the Greeks, and they use it in their myths to describe the disordered time when nothing existed. From Chaos came Gaia, the Earth, who gave birth to Ouranos, the sky. Their passion was so great that the children Gaia conceived could not escape from her womb; so the Titans, huge, human-like beings, decided to overthrow their father. The youngest, Cronos, seized a sickle and castrated Ouranos, allowing the Titans to escape. From Ouranos’ blood sprang the Furies, goddesses of vengeance.

Thus the Titans gained control over the universe. An oracle warned Cronos that the children of himself and his sister Rhea would overthrow him as he had overthrown them; so he swallowed the first five to emerge. Rhea, however, hid the sixth from him. She hid the baby Zeus in a cave until he was old enough to confront his father: eventually, he forced him to regurgitate his brothers and sisters, and a mighty war between the Titans and the New Gods followed.

The New Gods – Zeus, Hades and Poseidon, and Hestia, Hera and Demeter – freed the Cyclopes (one-eyed giants, the siblings of the Titans) from their prisons where the Titans had locked them and the gigantic creatures made weapons for them – the thunderbolt for Zeus, the trident for Poseidon, and a helmet of invisibility for Hades. The New Gods overcame the Titans and ruled over the earth.

The other gods who ruled were the children of the New Gods – Athena, Goddess of War and Wisdom, Patroness of Athens, daughter of Zeus and Metis, a Titaness; Apollo and Artemis, the twin children of Zeus and the Titaness Leto, God of the Sun and the Arts and Goddess of Hunting, Virginity and the Moon respectively; Ares, God of War, son of Zeus and Hera, Goddess of Women and Childbirth; Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, born from where a drop of Ouranos’ blood fell upon the sea; and Hermes, the Messenger of the Gods, God of Thieves and Tricksters, the son of Zeus and Maia.

According to Greeks, the gods lived upon Mount Olympus, a holy place unaccessable to men. When the hero Bellerophon tried to reach the home of the gods upon the winged horse Pegasus, the gods sent a gadfly to sting the horse, which bucked and threw its rider. Bellerephon tumbled to the land and wandered blind and poor for the rest of his days.

Bellerophon was not the only one to feel the vengeance of the gods; Arachne boasted that she could beat the goddess Athena in a weaving contest, and won – in her wrath and jealousy Athena turned her into a spider (thus we get the word “arachnid”). Medusa slept with a man in Poseidon’s temple and the sea god turned her and her two sisters into hideous Gorgons, with fangs, scales and snakes for hair.

When monsters such as the Gorgons and the Minotaur (who was the offspring of a bull and the King of Minos’ wife) were created, it was the duty of heroes to destroy them. Greek heroes were not full gods, but many were part-divine (Herakles was the son of Zeus and a woman, as was Perseus). In either case, they were worshipped as holy, although they were rarely praised as gods were.

Other folk featuring in Greek mythology were the dryads, hamadryads, nereids and naiads, the spirits (usually depicted as females) of mountains, rivers, seas and trees. Often in pursuit of these beautiful creatures were the hybrid satyrs, mixtures of goats and men, and the primitive centaurs, with the bodies of horses and the torsos and heads of men. Almost no centaurs were civilised, save Charon, the wise teacher, and a few of his associates.

The satyrs (and some centaurs) were often found in the companionship of the female maenids, who worshipped the wine god, Dionysus. The maenids were wild and were known to rip men apart in their crazed dancing.

Greek mythology was a central part of Ancient Greek life: they dedicated temples and cities to their gods and performed rites and sacrifices. The influence of the Greeks over the rest of the world meant their religion spread across the globe: the Romans and Egyptians, for example, adopted many Greek gods, although they generally gave them different names.

Despite the power of Greek mythology, as religions such as Judaism and later Catholicism travelled across the world, it was enveloped and dragged out of existence, so that today we only know Greek mythology as a group of meaningless – yet interesting – legends and fantastical stories about heroes, gods and strange creatures.

The island’s very existence is rooted in ancient civilisation and mythology. Paphos is a prime example. St.Paul’s pillar within the compound of the church of Chrysopolitissa is where, by tradition, Saint Paul was flogged. A few kilometers from the main town is Aphrodite’s Rock, which juts out of the Mediterranean Sea at the spot where Aphrodite, the mythological goddess of love is said to have emerged from the sea in 1200BC.

People come from across the world to visit these locations – yet more recent events have added to the interest value of visiting Paphos. One such object – of nautical attention – can be seen whilst traveling along the main Paphos to Coral Bay Road.

On 23 March 1998, the Honduran-flagged M/V Demetrios II ran aground off Paphos Lighthouse, close to Chloraka Village, in heavy seas during a voyage from Greece to Syria with a cargo of timber.
When the accident took place, the ship had eight crew members – four Greeks, two Pakistanis and two Syrians. The crew were rescued and airlifted to the safety of Paphos by a British Military Helicopter.

At the time of the incident, reports in the English-language newspaper ‘The Cyprus Mail’ stated that seafarers certificates issued for some of the crew of the cargo ship were forged – confirmed in a report appearing in Lloyds List that the competency certificates issued for the Greek captain and the Pakistani first officer were “high-quality” Liberian fakes.
The Demetrios II was left stranded on rocks near the Paphos lighthouse, where it remains to this day – a fascinating landmark and an item of noteworthy interest!

This particular culture includes the longstanding tradition of wine-making. How often do we really think about where our bottle of wine actually comes from when we pick up the latest bargain from the supermarket or the off licence? Not very often perhaps? So why not take advantage of the opportunity to fill this gap in your knowledge and get even more satisfaction from your stay in Cyprus?

An excellent induction can be found at the Fikardos Winery which has been making quality wines since 1990. Every year, the enhancement in the style and quality of its wines attracts a greater circle of devotees. Because of its hard work and dedication to quality wine making, it is increasingly respected as one of the leading wineries in Cyprus with a growing international reputation.

The south-western slopes of the Troodos Mountains are the location for some of the finest vineyards in Cyprus. Here, long-established local grapes grow alongside famous international varieties that have been introduced successfully to the island. The combination of soil (The ‘Terroir’), location, altitude and climate provide superb opportunities for the winemaker to demonstrate skills in vinification and blending.

The Fikardos Winery is located at Mesogi village, just north of Paphos town. It is a modern state-of-the-art wine-making plant, settled in an area rich with thousands of years of wine tradition.

The origins of Cyprus’ most prolific indigenous variety of grapes – the red wine grape “Mavro” and the white “Xynisteri” – are lost in the mists of time. Other old varieties, like Opthalmo, Maratheftiko, Spourtiko and Lefkada, have blossomed under the hands of today’s winemakers. The land around the Paphos region hill-villages of Kili, Tsada, Kallepia, Polemi, Stroumbi and Letymbou abound with them.
In the past 20 years these fertile mountain slopes have seen plantings of suitable international varieties, which now produce new-style wines of distinction such as Chardonnay, Sémillon, Shiraz, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Mataro “Mourvèdre”. Fikardos Winery masterfully utilises these varieties to create fresh, young, fruity wines in both varietal and blended styles, as well as wines suited to ageing.

Fikardos Winery makes a range of red, white and rosé local table wines. New French oak barrels are used for maturing some red wines and for the fermentation of Chardonnay Fume Xilogefiro.
Fikardos wines leave the winery in perfect condition, with daily deliveries by the company’s own vehicles for sale in leading supermarkets, wine stores, hotels and restaurants. The company unashamedly regards its customers as friends – and freely encourages the beginning of that friendship through visits to the winery for a tasting – or enjoying the hospitality of the Leonardo Restaurant owned by Mr Theodoros Fikardos.

For further information, visit the website: www.fikardoswines.com.cy

Kolossi Castle is a fine example of military architecture originally constructed in the 13th century and subsequently rebuilt in its present form in the middle of the 15th century. It served first as the Grand Commandery of the Knights Templar and, after the fall of Acre in 1291, for some years as the headquarters of the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Kolossi and its castle are directly connected with several key events in the tempestuous history of Cyprus. In 1191 Richard the Lionheart of England conquered Cyprus after it had been ruled by Isaac Commenus. Isaac Comnenus was the Byzantine Governor of Cyprus who declared himself an independent ruler of Cyprus and would not assist Richard and the Crusaders.

Elsewhere on the island St.Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara Castles were captured by Richard the Lionheart. The Castle of Kyrenia was captured by Guy de Lusignan who imprisoned the wife and daughter of Isaac who had sent them there believing they would be safe. Kolossi Castle belonged first to the Order of the Templars and then to the Order of St. John.
Opinions differ about the building of the castle. According to one point of view the castle was build in 1210 A.D. when Kolossi was given by King Hugh I to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The ruins of the original castle still exist on the East, North and North-East side of the existing building.

According to another opinion the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem built the castle in 1454 A.D. The difference in these two opinions is that while they both agree that the present castle was built in 1454, the first supports the notion that this was built on the ruins of an older castle; the alternative view seems to ignore the existence of an older, pre-existing castle at the same place.

The castle today looks magnificent with its really impressive square shape. It was – and remains – very well built on the lines of a tower, similar to others seen across Europe. The castle’s military architecture offered sanctuary and security to the area. It was strong enough to resist any attacks and certainly as strong as the Kyrenia Castle, making it considered to be impregnable.

Each of its four sides are 16m long on the outside and 13.5m on the inside. The height of the castle is 21m. During the hundreds of years since the building of Kolossi Castle, the original investment in its solid and durable construction has protected this fortress from the ravages of time and the many earthquakes that occur naturally in the area.