This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 2–8 March 2026

Kourion and three neighbouring heritage sites near Limassol closed for five days this week after drones targeted the British base at Akrotiri, and the University of Cyprus put online a lecture by Jenny Webb on Bronze Age Lapithos.

Map of Cyprus

This week's stories

• Sites and museums
• Events
• Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

N

50 km

Sites on this map

1. 1Kourion
2. 2Lapithos

Sites and museums

On Monday 2 March the Department of Antiquities closed four places near Limassol until further notice: the ancient city of Kourion, the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, Kolossi Castle and the Local Archaeological Kourion Museum at Episkopi. Around midday two drones heading for the British base at Akrotiri were intercepted. Some twelve hours before, another had hit the base's runway and caused limited damage.

The Department announced on 6 March that all four would reopen the next day, Saturday 7 March, on their regular hours. Kourion was the seat of one of the Iron Age kingdoms of Cyprus and later a Hellenistic and Roman city; the sanctuary of Apollo Hylates, in use from the late 8th century BCE, lies to its west.

Events

On 3 March the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus posted "The archaeology of Bronze Age Lapithos: from 1913 to 2025", a lecture by Dr Jenny Webb in its 65th public lecture series. Lapithos, on the north coast in the area occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion, has a large Early and Middle Bronze Age cemetery at Vrysi tou Barba. Webb has been publishing the tombs that John Myres and Menelaos Markides opened there in 1913, the first organised excavation at Lapithos, most recently in a 2025 volume of the Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology series.