Nicosia museum workshop teaches children the peaks and castles of Pentadaktylos

Children aged 6 to 12 can spend the morning of Saturday 28 November learning about Pentadaktylos, the mountain range of the north coast of Cyprus, at the Centre of Visual Arts and Research (CVAR) of the Costas and Rita Severis Foundation in Nicosia. The session, "The Secrets of Pentadaktylos", belongs to the museum's Saturday at the Museum series. It runs from 11:00 to 12:30, is held in Greek and costs €10 per child.

The range, with the coast below it and its castles, has been illegally occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion.

What the children will do

The foundation describes the programme as a guided look at paintings, engravings and illustrated books from the Costas and Rita Severis Collection. From these pictures the children learn what the peaks are called, find the medieval castles built on the slopes, and hear the legends and stories attached to the kings and queens of the island's past. The museum educator Kyriakos Theocharous designed the programme and leads it. The morning closes with a painting session in which each child makes a picture of the mountains from what they have seen and heard.

Places are booked by telephone on 22300991. The workshop is part of the foundation's CREATES educational programmes, supported by The Hellenic Initiative, Canada and the Active Citizens Fund.

The range and its castles

Pentadaktylos is the Greek name of the Kyrenia range, the limestone ridge behind the north coast. Kyrenia lies on the narrow strip between the ridge and the sea, where the main pass from the central plain comes down to the harbour.

Three crusader castles stand on the range close to one another, St Hilarion, Buffavento and Kantara, long used to guard the north coast against invaders [1, p. 152]. Their best-known episode comes from May 1191, when Richard I of England, on his way to the Third Crusade, took Cyprus from its emperor, Isaac Comnenos. On 12 May Richard married Berengaria of Navarre at Limassol, where she was crowned Queen of England. After Isaac was beaten at Tremethousha on the Mesaoria plain, Guy Lusignan followed him into the mountains and took the castles of Kyrenia, St Hilarion and Buffavento; Isaac, who had been hiding at Kantara, then surrendered to Richard [1, pp. 150–152]. In 1192 Guy Lusignan took over the island [1, p. 152].

The collection and the other Saturdays

The pictures come from the collection built by Costas and Rita Severis, whose research includes tracing more than 100 drawings and watercolours of Cyprus that Edmond Duthoit made in 1862, now in the Musée de Picardie at Amiens.

The museum holds two more Saturday workshops for children before this one, on 14 and 21 November, both listed on its family workshops page.