Relics from the History Museum of Armenia go on show at Nicosia's Byzantine Museum until April

Objects lent by the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan are on display in Nicosia until 9 April 2027, in a loan exhibition titled "Faith and Identity: Relics from the History Museum of Armenia" at the Archbishop Makarios III Foundation's Byzantine Museum.

The show opened on 9 October 2026 for a six-month run, the Armenian Embassy in Cyprus, which first proposed it, announced. The Byzantine Museum put it together with the Yerevan museum and the Armenian Prelacy of Cyprus. The pieces from Armenia are shown alongside items of Armenian heritage kept on the island, which the Prelacy supplied. Speakers at the opening included Archbishop Georgios of Cyprus, the Deputy Minister of Culture Clea Hadjistephanou Papaellina, the Prelacy's Pontifical Vicar Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian, and the two museum directors, Ioannis Eliades in Nicosia and Davit Poghosyan in Yerevan. Ambassador Inna Torgomyan presented the exhibition as a dialogue between the Christian cultures of Armenia and Cyprus.

The host museum belongs to the Church of Cyprus and holds icons and other Byzantine and post-Byzantine church art. Its collection goes back to 1936, when 112 icons were gathered in the Church of Panagia Phaneromeni in Nicosia; the museum itself grew out of the Makarios III Foundation's Cultural Centre, founded in 1978.