Eleftheria Square, Nicosia: salvage excavation at the D'Avila Bastion

In the corner between the Venetian curtain wall and the flank of the D'Avila bastion in Nicosia, excavators found an oblong feature at foundation level with intense traces of fire, filled with burned and semi-burned human bone, charcoal and metal objects described as possibly armour and military equipment; the report of the Department of Antiquities says it is most probably associated with the Ottoman siege of Lefkosia in 1570¹. The Department excavated under Chrysanthi Kounnou, Archaeological Officer, in view of planned landscaping of Eleftheria Square¹.

A first phase in May and June 2008 opened trenches in the moat east of the square, along Stasinos Avenue, for five foundations of the eastern ramp, and found no architecture; the upper fill, about 1.5 m thick, was dated to the end of the Ottoman period and mostly to British rule¹. In the second phase, from August 2008 to early February 2009, mechanical diggers removed the fill of the square under constant Department supervision, and excavation exposed the curtain wall, the bastion flank and the original Venetian bastion, covered when the square was formed¹. Archival research and excavation together showed that the western orillon was partly demolished in 1939 to widen the town entrance and rebuilt farther east by 1940, leaving the original beneath the square. A rubble layer of worked sandstone and reddish mortar beside the curtain wall suggests to the report that the wall once stood higher and was demolished to make the square¹.

The fill gave mostly Ottoman and British period sherds, the lower strata smaller amounts of 16th-century pottery, and 140 Ottoman clay pipes, mostly fragmentary and dated by the report to the 17th to 19th centuries¹. The northeast-corner excavation was completed in February 2009 and the exposed Venetian walls were conserved and restored; moat sections dug in March to map foundation levels revealed no architectural remains². The Cyprus Mail reported on 4 June 2009 that the Department had set conditions on the revised Zaha Hadid design, on the distance of support structures from the wall and the level of the new square³. The square was later rebuilt to a Zaha Hadid Architects design, whose entry for the World Architecture Community Awards says the work included archaeological excavations and opened parts of the moat to the public⁴.