Kolossi Castle
Three-storey Hospitaller keep of 1454 west of Limassol, beside the ruins of a medieval sugar mill.
Kolossi Castle stands on the coastal plain some fourteen kilometres west of Limassol, on land granted to the Knights Hospitaller in the thirteenth century. After the fall of Acre in 1291 the estate became the Grand Commandery of the Order of St John, and for a few years in the early fourteenth century the Order's headquarters. The square keep that survives today was rebuilt in 1454 under the commander Louis de Magnac, whose coat of arms appears on the building, and the site later passed to the Knights Templar and then to Venetian and Ottoman rule.
The keep rises through three storeys, with a basement store, a first floor of vaulted chambers and a roof terrace reached by a spiral stair; a machicolation above the entrance defended the drawbridge. A wall painting of the Crucifixion survives on the first floor. Beside the keep stand the roofless remains of a fourteenth-century sugar factory, where cane grown on the surrounding estates was milled and refined for export. The Hospitallers also made the sweet wine that gave its name to Commandaria, still produced in the villages inland.
Highlights
- Square three-storey keep rebuilt in 1454 by commander Louis de Magnac
- Carved marble coat of arms and a Crucifixion wall painting inside
- Roofless ruins of the fourteenth-century sugar mill next to the keep
- Roof terrace with views over the Kourion plain and the vineyards
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