Salamis

Salamis lies on the east coast of Cyprus, on the north side of the mouth of the Pedieos river where it enters Famagusta Bay, about 7 km north of Famagusta. It was founded in the 11th century BC, a few kilometres from the Late Bronze Age town of Enkomi, and for most of the Iron Age it was the capital of the largest of the island's kingdoms. Its kings were buried with their horses and chariots in the built tombs of the so-called Royal Necropolis west of the city. Under Rome Salamis was the largest city on the island, with a gymnasium, baths and a theatre; rebuilt after the earthquakes of the 4th century AD and renamed Constantia, it became the see of the metropolitan bishops of Cyprus. Most of the city was abandoned in the 7th century [1, pp. 190, 196–198]. Fieldwork by the Department of Antiquities and a French mission ran from 1952 until 1974 [2, pp. 25–27].

The site at the mouth of the Pedieos

The Pedieos is the longest river of Cyprus. It drains the central plain, the Mesaoria, and reaches the sea through low ground at Salamis. The ancient city spread along the shore north of its mouth. Much of it now lies under sand dunes and under a forest of pine, acacia and eucalyptus planted in the 20th century. When Vassos Karageorghis first came to the site in 1952 he found "a forest of mimosas and eucalyptus", and the Forestry Department had built a house on top of the baths of the gymnasium [2, p. 25].

The coastline has changed. Earthquakes of the 4th century AD lowered the land at Salamis relative to the sea by about 2 m; the ancient shoreline is now a reef offshore, and the old harbour basins are a shallow lagoon [3]. The main harbour lay at the river mouth and silted up over time. Where the harbour that Isocrates credits to Evagoras I lay is still argued over [3].

Water reached the Roman and Late Antique city by an aqueduct from the spring of Kephalovryse at Kythrea, ancient Chytroi. Inscriptions of the reign of Heraclius (610–641) record a rebuilding with new arches, and the pointed arches that still stand along its line belong to that repair. Whether there was an earlier, Roman line is debated: J.-P. Sodini argued that the aqueduct was first built in the 7th century [4]. At the city end the water was stored in a large vaulted reservoir, the Vouta, near the Granite Forum.

Map of Cyprus

• Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

N

50 km

Sites on this map

1. 1Salamis
2. 2Enkomi
3. 3Kalopsidha (approx.)
4. 4Sinda
5. 5Achna
6. 6Chytroi

Exploration and excavation

Travellers described the ruins from the Middle Ages onwards. In the 1870s and early 1880s the brothers Luigi and Alexander Palma di Cesnola dug at Salamis and in its cemeteries; Alexander published his finds in Salaminia (1882), but the findspots he gave for his objects are not reliable [5; 1, p. 17]. Max Ohnefalsch-Richter dug in the city and the necropolis in the early 1880s [1, p. 18], and in 1882 George Gordon Hake and Herbert Kitchener opened tombs between the Monastery of St Barnabas and Enkomi for the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum); Hake did most of the fieldwork and explored some 45 tombs [6, p. 61].

The first systematic excavation was that of the Cyprus Exploration Fund in 1890, directed by J. A. R. Munro and H. A. Tubbs. They cut trial trenches across the town and worked in the baths, along a colonnaded street, in a temple court and around the basilica of St Epiphanios; they also excavated a sanctuary at the locality Toumba [7; 8]. Their finds went to the British Museum. The most important was a marble capital carved with bulls' heads, of the late Classical or Hellenistic period, from the great colonnaded street leading to the Temple of Zeus. In early 1891 sailors of HMS Melita and local workmen hauled it on a sledge along the road to Famagusta for shipment to London [6, pp. 51, 68–69]. The British Museum's later Turner Bequest excavations of 1896 worked at Enkomi [9], and objects from there are sometimes labelled "Salamis". One of their tunnels in 1896 reached the chamber under the great tumulus of Royal Tomb 3 and found it empty [1, p. 67].

Modern excavation began in 1952, when the Department of Antiquities sent Karageorghis, then 23, to clear the gymnasium and the theatre. He directed the work at Salamis for 22 years, from 1963 as Director of Antiquities [2, pp. 25–27]. Porphyrios Dikaios excavated Royal Tomb 1 in 1957 [1, p. 25; 10], and from 1962 Karageorghis excavated the necropolis, publishing the tombs in a series of volumes [11; 12]. Andreas Dikigoropoulos worked on the basilica of St Epiphanios in the 1950s.

In 1964 Jean Pouilloux of the University of Lyon began a French mission, which took the southern part of the town along the shore while the Department kept the public buildings of the north and the necropolis [13; 14]. Marguerite Yon directed it from 1972, with Georges Roux, Olivier Callot, Annie Caubet and Jean Jehasse among its members; its results appear in the series Salamine de Chypre [14; 15].

All this work ended in 1974, when Salamis passed out of the control of the Republic of Cyprus. The excavators lost access to their dig-houses, their records and the finds stored on site [2, pp. 25–26]. Since the late 1990s Ankara University, under A. Coşkun Özgünel, has excavated in the city [16]; the Republic of Cyprus and the French mission dispute its legality. Up to 2021 the bicommunal Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, with funding from the European Union through the UNDP, conserved the mosaics, finds and the basilicas of St Epiphanios and Kampanopetra [17]. The papers of a conference held in 2015 sum up research on the city to date [18].

Phases of the city

Phases

1. Foundation11th century BC

   A new coastal town takes over from Enkomi. Tomb T.I, of the first half of the century, is its earliest securely dated grave.

2. Tenth and ninth centuries BC

   Almost no archaeological evidence from the city.

3. City-kingdom8th century to 311/310 BC

   The Royal Tombs, the Cellarka cemetery, sanctuaries in the countryside, coinage from the 6th century. Evagoras I rules c. 411–374/373 BC.

4. Ptolemaic and Roman cityc. 310 BC to the 4th century AD

   Gymnasium, theatre, Temple of Zeus. Paphos is the capital; Salamis is the largest city.

5. Constantiamid-4th to 7th century AD

   Rebuilt after the earthquakes of 332 and 342 as the metropolis of Cyprus, with the basilicas of St Epiphanios and Kampanopetra.

6. Declineafter 647/648 AD

   Arab raids and a reduced settlement; the population moves to Famagusta.

From Enkomi to Salamis

Until 1965 nothing earlier than the 8th century BC was known from Salamis. That year the French mission found sherds of the 11th century in soundings near the harbour, and a rich chamber tomb, T.I, about 100 m south of the later Temple of Zeus [1, pp. 21–22; 19]. Tomb T.I is of the first half of the 11th century BC. It held some 250 vases, gold rings, earrings and pendants, bronze and iron tools and weapons, seals and a scarab; the pottery includes Proto-White Painted ware and shapes drawn from the Aegean, Crete and the Levant [19; 1, p. 21]. For Karageorghis the tomb marked "the early stages of the history of the city" and showed how Salamis took the place of nearby Enkomi [2, p. 27]. Enkomi and Salamis overlapped for a time: the sanctuary of the Ingot God at Enkomi was still in use after the new town existed [20].

Why the town moved to the coast is less clear. The usual answer is that alluvium from the Pedieos silted up Enkomi's harbour. A study of the delta sediments by B. Devillers found that the coast did build out and leave the old anchorage behind, but that the evidence does not tie this to the move with any precision; a political choice is as likely [21]. Maria Iacovou reads the foundation as a move by Enkomi's own merchant families to a new site, while noting that the Aegean-type chamber tomb with its long dromos was new [20]. A. Bernard Knapp prefers to see a mixing of local and incoming people over a colonisation by Greek-speakers [22].

Greek writers from the 5th century BC onwards told a different story. Teucer, son of Telamon of Salamis in the Saronic Gulf and half-brother of Ajax, was exiled after the Trojan War, sailed to Cyprus and named his new city after his homeland. The legend appears in Pindar and in Euripides' Helen (412 BC), and later in Virgil and Horace. The kings of Salamis claimed descent from Teucer. No cult place or image of Teucer has been found at Salamis, and the legend is best read as the city's own account of itself.

The bronze spit inscribed with the name Opheltas, the earliest Greek text found in Cyprus, is sometimes said to come from Salamis. It was found in Tomb 49 at Palaepaphos-Skales [23]. A tomb at Salamis of about 1050 BC held three uninscribed bronze spits.

The city-kingdom

From the 8th century BC Salamis was the capital of a kingdom that came to control much of the Mesaoria and the Karpas peninsula. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon's prism of 673/672 BC lists ten kings of Cyprus; "Kisu of Sillua" is usually taken to be a king of Salamis, though the reading is not certain [24]. Salamis was among the first Cypriot kingdoms to strike coins, in the second half of the 6th century. The earliest bear a ram and the name of Evelthon in the Cypriot syllabary, but the name continued on later issues, so their date is uncertain [25]. The coins of Salamis are discussed further in the compendium.

Herodotus (5.104–116) tells how, in 499/498 BC, Onesilos seized the throne from his brother Gorgos and led Cyprus into the Ionian revolt against Persia. At the battle outside Salamis Stasanor of Kourion and the Salaminian war-chariots went over to the Persians, Onesilos was killed, and Gorgos was restored. Herodotus is the only connected account, and a partial one.

Evagoras I, the best-known king of Salamis, took the throne about 411 BC, drove out a Phoenician ruler, became an ally of Athens and at his height controlled much of the island; he fought Persia in the 380s and was murdered in 374/373 BC. Our main source is a eulogy by the Athenian orator Isocrates. Evagoras was the first Cypriot king to put the Greek alphabet on his coins beside the syllabary, and the first to strike gold [25]. His city has hardly been found: the French excavators located no building of the Classical period [14].

The kingdom ended in the wars that followed Alexander's death. Ptolemy I made Nicocreon his general on the island, then suspected him of dealing with his rival Antigonus; in 311/310 BC Nicocreon killed himself, his queen Axiothea had the women of the family killed, and the palace was set on fire [1, pp. 163–164]. Ptolemy's brother Menelaos then held Salamis. In 306 BC Demetrius Poliorcetes defeated Ptolemy's fleet in a sea battle off the city, and the island was Antigonid until Ptolemy took it back in 294 BC.

The Royal Tombs

The so-called Royal Tombs lie on the plain west of the city, between the Salamis forest and the Monastery of St Barnabas [1, p. 25]. Each has a chamber of dressed limestone blocks, entered through a small porch in the shape of the Greek letter Π (a propylaeum), at the end of a long sloping passage, the dromos, cut into the soft rock. Almost all the chambers had been robbed, in antiquity or in the 19th century, but the dromoi had been left alone, and it was in them that the excavators found the vehicles, the animals and the offerings [1, pp. 25, 67]. The tombs were used from the middle of the 8th century to the 6th century BC [1, pp. 25–26, 98–99]. Most are of the Cypro-Archaic period. No tomb bears an inscription or can be given to a named king, so "royal" is best taken to mean the ruling house and its aristocracy [26].

Horses and chariots in the dromos

The dead were brought to the tomb on a hearse or a war chariot. The vehicle was driven down the dromos, and the team was killed where it stood, still in its harness; the hearse or chariot was left in place. The larger tombs had horses; the team of the hearse in Tomb 2 was a pair of asses [1, pp. 31–32, 53]. Amphorae of oil, and jars of a kind still used for honey, were set out in the dromos; one amphora in Tomb 3 is labelled "of olive oil" in the Cypriot syllabary [1, p. 71]. In Tomb 47 one horse of the first burial, trying to run away, twisted its neck round the yoke and broke it in falling [1, p. 53]. In the filling of the dromos of Tomb 2 lay the skeleton of a man with his hands joined as if tied, and Karageorghis took it for a servant killed to accompany his master [1, pp. 30–31]. The horses and chariots of the vase painters thus had their counterpart in the tombs.

Tomb 1 and Tomb 47

Royal Tomb 1 was reported in 1954 after looters had found it, and Porphyrios Dikaios excavated it for the Department in 1957 [1, p. 25]. It is a different tomb from the French Tomb T.I of the 11th century. Its earlier burial, of the middle of the 8th century BC, was a cremation: the burnt bones, wrapped in cloth, lay in a bronze cauldron sunk in the floor, with a necklace of gold and rock-crystal beads. With it were 27 Greek Geometric vases, probably from Euboea [1, pp. 25–26; 10].

Tomb 47 has a dromos 20 m long and two burials. The first, towards the end of the 8th century BC, had a hearse and two horses; the second, in the first half of the 7th century, had six horses for two vehicles, two of them with blinkers and headbands of carved ivory. An Egyptian scarab of Osorkon I (926–881 BC), an heirloom belonging to the first burial, lay in the filling of the dromos [1, pp. 50, 53–54].

Tomb 3 and Tomb 50

Tomb 3 lies under a great earth tumulus, about 60 m across at the base and 10 m high [1, p. 67]. Its chamber had been robbed by tunnelling, but the dromos still held the skeletons of four horses, a pair with each of two vehicles, a war chariot and a hearse. With the chariot were quivers of arrows, an iron spearhead, part of a bronze shield and an iron sword fastened with silver-headed rivets [1, pp. 68–70]. The tomb held a single burial of about 600 BC, dated by its pottery [1, p. 71]. A mud-brick vault over the chamber has been studied as an Archaic survival of the tholos [27].

Tomb 50, the "Tomb" or "Prison of St Catherine", stood open throughout the Middle Ages and was taken for a Graeco-Roman building until a fragment of cornice from the dromos of Tomb 47 matched the cornice inside its chamber. Excavation in 1965 showed that it began as a built tomb of the same kind, with sacrificed horses in its dromos; in the Roman period its porch was walled and vaulted to make a large chamber, and it has long been a chapel [1, pp. 54–63].

Tomb 79 and its furniture

Tomb 79, excavated in the mid-1960s, was in R. D. Barnett's words "the richest tomb ever found in Cyprus" [28]. Its chamber had been robbed, but the dromos held the remains of two burials, the first at the end of the 8th century BC and the second a few years later, each with a chariot and a hearse and their teams [1, pp. 77–81]. The finds include bronze horse gear decorated in repoussé, two bronze cauldrons with griffin heads, a pair of iron fire-dogs and a bundle of twelve iron spits [28]. Beside the façade stood furniture of wood sheathed in ivory and silver: thrones, a bed with ivory friezes and a table. Karageorghis compared the ivory throne with Penelope's chair in the Odyssey and the ivories with those from Nimrud in Assyria [1, pp. 92–96]. The finds were taken to the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia before 1974; the larger cauldron was conserved in Mainz [2, p. 29]. On ivory work of this kind see ivory, bone and shell and furniture.

• Bronze Cauldron from SalamisGeometric III · 800–700 BCCyprus Museum, Nicosia
• Chair of SalamisGeometric III · 800–700 BCCyprus Museum, Nicosia
• Bed of SalamisGeometric III · 800–700 BCCyprus Museum, Nicosia
• Chair of SalamisGeometric III · 800–700 BCCyprus Museum, Nicosia

Tomb 80, the latest of the group, is a small chamber painted inside with lotus flowers and a net of rosettes on the vault; silver coins of Evelthon date it to the second half of the 6th century BC [1, pp. 98–99].

The Homeric reading of the tombs

Karageorghis read the dromoi alongside Book 23 of the Iliad: the horses killed at Patroklos's pyre, the amphorae of honey and oil, the bones wrapped in cloth and laid in a vessel [1, pp. 26–27, 71]. Later work has placed them in a wider setting. Burials with horses and vehicles were an elite practice across the Near East and the Mediterranean, and the Salamis tombs are now read mainly as displays of power and wealth by a ruling family, staged in public [26]. Homer and the Salaminians may have drawn on the same aristocratic customs of their time, without one copying the other. See also Bronze Age chamber tombs for the older Cypriot tradition.

The Cellarka cemetery

South-east of Tomb 50 lies Cellarka, the cemetery of the ordinary citizens, found in 1964 during a search for a tomb that Ohnefalsch-Richter had dug in 1881 [1, p. 99]. In three seasons, 1964, 1965 and 1967, Karageorghis excavated one hundred rock-cut tombs within an area of 1,092 m²; most had been looted, since they lay close to the surface [1, p. 100]. The cemetery has since been re-evaluated by E. Raptou, who reviews the number and dating of the tombs [29]. The tombs were used as family vaults from about 700 BC to the end of the 4th century BC. Each has a stepped dromos and a small chamber with rock-cut benches, closed by a slab; as space ran out, tombs were cut above others [1, pp. 99–150].

Over many tombs the excavators found small offering pyres: shallow pits of ash with juglets, clay jewellery, incense burners and burnt grapes, almonds, grain and shells. Karageorghis compared them with the boiled wheat, kollyva, still offered to the dead in Cyprus [1, pp. 117–121]. Infants were buried in amphorae, among them Attic "SOS" amphorae and a Rhodian jar [1, pp. 119–120, 128]. From the 11th century onwards the painted pottery of the Salamis region belongs mainly to the Bichrome tradition.

Tumulus 77

The second great tumulus, Tomb 77, stands on raised ground at the eastern edge of the village of Enkomi. Looters, Cesnola and the British Museum's expedition of 1896 had all tunnelled into it without finding a tomb [1, p. 151]. Karageorghis excavated it in the 1960s. It held no burial. Under the mound was a platform of mud brick with a large pyre, and on it the remains of life-size figures of unbaked clay that the fire had baked. Among the heads are a woman, two men whose strongly marked features suggest portraits, and three young men idealised in the manner of Lysippos [1, p. 156]; with them were gold ornaments, iron spearheads and a shield [1, pp. 151–164]. Karageorghis argued that it was a cenotaph raised by the Salaminians for Nicocreon and his family, whose bodies lay under the ruins of the burnt palace. He wrote that "there is a certain amount of conjecture in identifying this monument with the cenotaph of King Nicocreon" [1, pp. 163–164]. The attribution is still debated [30; 31]. The clay heads are in the Cyprus Museum.

Sanctuaries and terracotta statues

The early town had a sanctuary of a male god, with clay bull protomes, found by the French mission near the shore. The excavators called him the Great God of Salamis, later identified with Zeus [14]. Outside the city stood sanctuaries that received large offerings. At Toumba, excavated by the Cyprus Exploration Fund in 1890, worshippers dedicated life-size and smaller statues of terracotta in the 7th and 6th centuries BC [8]. A bothros (offering pit) of a sanctuary near St Barnabas held limestone statuettes [1]. The French mission published the terracotta figurines from the city, including a deposit dedicated to a Great Goddess in the Classical period [32; 33]. The local workshops made standing figures, horse-and-rider figurines and figures on wheels; see terracotta sculpture.

• Bearded Terracotta StatueArchaic I · 650–575 BCBritish Museum
• Terracotta Flower HolderArchaic II · 650–550 BCBritish Museum
• Zeus-Ammon Terracotta FigureClassical · 475–300 BCBritish Museum
• Terracotta Throne FigurineClassical · 400–300 BCBritish Museum

Hellenistic and Roman Salamis

Under the Ptolemies Salamis lost its king but kept a special place: statue bases for the ruler cult and honours voted by the island's guild of actors stood in its gymnasium [34]. Rome annexed Cyprus in 58 BC. The provincial capital was Paphos, but Salamis was the largest city. Earthquakes damaged it in the late Hellenistic period and again in AD 76/77, and much of the Roman city visible today belongs to the rebuilding under Trajan and Hadrian [1, pp. 185, 189].

The Temple of Zeus

At the south end of the long agora stood the Temple of Zeus Olympios, on a high podium. The French excavators dated its first phase to the late Hellenistic period, with major Roman rebuilding [35; 36]; Th. Mavrojannis has argued that it served as a Capitolium [37]. In AD 22 the Roman Senate confirmed the right of asylum of three Cypriot sanctuaries, one of them this temple. The priest of Zeus was also priest of the emperors and gymnasiarch [34].

The gymnasium and baths

The gymnasium goes back to the Ptolemaic period. Its Roman form, rebuilt after the earthquake of AD 76/77, is a courtyard (palaestra) surrounded by porticoes, with baths on the east side [1, pp. 167–190]. On its south-west corner a semicircular latrine had seats for 44 people, the largest found in Cyprus [1]. The marble columns that stand today are not the Roman originals. The earthquakes of 332 and 342 brought the building down; after about a century the gymnasium was restored as baths for the Christian city, and its columns were replaced with marble columns and Corinthian capitals, most probably taken from the stage building of the theatre [1, p. 190]. The Department of Antiquities set them up again after 1952 [2, pp. 25–26].

The baths had heated rooms over hypocausts, cold pools and a large hall with an apse. Niches in their walls kept paintings and wall mosaics of about the end of the 3rd century AD, because Christians later walled them up: Hylas carried off by the nymphs, Apollo and Artemis killing the children of Niobe, and Leda with the swan [1, pp. 186–189; 38]. Statues of gods and heroes found in the baths and drains, many of them broken, are now in the Cyprus Museum and the Famagusta District Museum. Some had been deliberately mutilated, probably by Christians [1, p. 191; 39].

Reconstruction · Building · Roman

How a Roman Bath Was Heated

1st to 4th century AD

Our reconstruction of a small Roman bath is a general model of how such baths were heated. It is not a reconstruction of the baths at Salamis, which are much larger.

Formats: Measured drawings · 3D model · Build sequence · Guided tour

The theatre and amphitheatre

The theatre, about 100 m south of the gymnasium, was found in 1959 and its excavation was not finished in 1974. Built under Augustus and modified several times before the earthquakes of the 4th century AD, it faces west, so that the audience sat with their backs to the sea [1, pp. 193–194; 40]. Of the seats only the foundations of the eight lowest rows and the seats of the last two rows survived; much of the seating seen today is restored. Karageorghis estimated more than 50 rows and about 15,000 spectators from the height of the outer wall [1, p. 194]. Statues of Muses, Apollo with his lyre and the infant Heracles were found in the debris of its stage building [1]. The Flavian benefactor Servius Sulpicius Pancles Veranianus repaired an amphitheatre "between the theatre and the gymnasium", which has never been excavated [41].

The Jewish revolt

In AD 115–117 the Jews of Cyprus rose against Rome. Cassius Dio says that 240,000 people were killed on the island, and Eusebius that the rebels destroyed Salamis. No inscription or coin from Cyprus confirms the scale of the destruction, and the figures are best taken as rhetoric [42; 1, p. 195].

Constantia, the Christian city

According to the Acts of the Apostles (13:4–5), Barnabas, Paul and John Mark landed at Salamis about AD 45 and preached in its synagogues. Later tradition makes Barnabas a native of the city and has him martyred and buried there. The finding of his relics, west of the city, is placed about 478, and tradition links to it the privileges that the emperor Zeno granted to the archbishop of Cyprus, although the independence of the Church of Cyprus from Antioch had already been upheld at the Council of Ephesus in 431 [43]. The Monastery of St Barnabas stands at the traditional place of the tomb.

The earthquakes of 332 and 342 ruined Salamis. It was rebuilt on a smaller scale with help from the emperor Constantius II and renamed Constantia [1, p. 190]. Whether Constantius or his father Constantine was the founder is discussed by G. Deligiannakis [44]. Constantia replaced Paphos as the metropolis of the island.

Its most famous bishop, Epiphanius (bishop c. 367–403), wrote the Panarion, a long treatise against heresies. The basilica of St Epiphanios, begun in his last years, was the largest early Christian church in Cyprus, with seven aisles at first and five after a later rebuilding; a marble-lined tomb at its east end is taken to be his [45; 1, pp. 197–198]. The basilica of Kampanopetra, by the sea at the south-east end of the city, dates to the late 5th or early 6th century. It has two atria and fine floors of cut marble (opus sectile); its purpose is debated [46; 47]. Nearby is a 6th-century underground cistern with Byzantine paintings [48].

Arab expeditions reached Cyprus in 647/648 and 653/654. Constantia was burnt and shrank; a hasty wall of re-used blocks enclosed what was left [1, pp. 192, 196–197]. Its people moved over time to the place that became Famagusta. A small church was built against the ruins of St Epiphanios, and coins of the Lusignan kings of Cyprus show that both basilicas were still visited in the Middle Ages [1, p. 198].

Finds and where they are

The furniture, cauldrons and chariot fittings of the Royal Tombs, the clay heads of Tumulus 77 and much of the sculpture from the gymnasium and theatre are in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. Sculpture from the gymnasium and the theatre was also shown in the Famagusta District Museum. The finds of the Cyprus Exploration Fund, among them the bull's-head capital and the Toumba terracottas, are in the British Museum [6; 8]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds pieces from the Cesnola collection said to come from Salamis, but their findspots cannot be trusted. Material excavated before 1974 and stored in the dig-houses and the Famagusta museum remained in the north. The finds listed below have a recorded findspot at Salamis.

Visiting Salamis

Salamis lies in the north of the island, in the area outside the control of the Republic of Cyprus since 1974, about 7 km north of Famagusta. The site is managed by the Department of Antiquities and Museums in the north. The visible remains include the gymnasium and its baths, the latrine, the theatre, the agora and the Temple of Zeus, the Vouta reservoir, the basilicas of Kampanopetra and St Epiphanios, and arches of the aqueduct. The Royal Tombs lie in a separate enclosure to the west, near the Monastery of St Barnabas, which houses an icon and archaeological museum. Enkomi is a short distance inland.