Ancient Cyprus in the photographic archive of the Centre of Visual Arts and Research (CVAR)

This collection brings together the items in that catalogue whose subject is the archaeology of ancient Cyprus: ancient sites and monuments, excavations and the people who worked on them, the island's museums, and antiquities. There are 222 items. Most are amateur photographs taken by people who lived in or visited Cyprus between the First World War and the late 1960s: the family of the director of the Skouriotissa mines in 1923 and 1924, a Colonial Secretary of the early 1930s, Ann Franken-Battershill at the Kouklia excavations of 1950 to 1952, the police officer Selwyn Roberts, a member of the Danish contingent of the United Nations force in 1964 and 1965, the United States Consul General Taylor Belcher and his wife Edith, and the photographer Edmond Torikian. Together they show Salamis, Kourion, Palaepaphos, Nea Paphos, Soli, Vouni and Kition as visitors found them, the gymnasium columns at Salamis being set up again in 1954, Vassos Karageorghis at the excavations at Kition, and the rooms of the Cyprus Museum in the 1920s and 1930s. Ten paintings, prints and drawings complete it, from Luigi Mayer's watercolours of the ruins of Amathus (1792) and Tristram Ellis's of Soli and an excavation near Larnaca (1878) to Leon Bakst's sketches of 1921.

The series follow CVAR's own sub-collections, which are named after the photographer or the family that gave the photographs. Each item has our English title and caption, written from CVAR's record and the image, with CVAR's own title and its transcription of any inscription on the print, slide or album page beside them. The date, photographer or artist, medium and CVAR's identifier are as CVAR gives them, and every item links to its record in CVAR's catalogue.

CVAR holds or manages the copyright in these items and their digital reproductions. They are reproduced here by permission of the Centre of Visual Arts and Research (CVAR), Costas and Rita Severis Foundation, and are not under an open licence; for any other use, ask CVAR.