Cyprus Medieval Museum (Limassol Castle)
Medieval collections of the island displayed inside the vaulted halls of Limassol's old castle.
Limassol Castle stands beside the old harbour, on a site where a Byzantine fortification is thought to have preceded the surviving building. Tradition connects the earlier church on the spot with the marriage of Richard the Lionheart and Berengaria of Navarre in 1191. The present squat structure is largely Ottoman work of the later sixteenth century, raised over Frankish and Venetian remains after repeated earthquakes and sieges. It served as a prison under British administration until the middle of the twentieth century.
The Department of Antiquities opened the Cyprus Medieval Museum in the castle in 1987, bringing together material from the fourth to the eighteenth century. Displays occupy the great hall, the undercroft and the upper chambers, and cover Byzantine and Frankish Cyprus, the Lusignan and Venetian periods and the early Ottoman centuries. Tombstones, marble reliefs, glazed pottery, coins, metalwork and wood carving are shown alongside photographs of Gothic churches and monasteries. The roof terrace gives a view over the old town and port.
Highlights
- Vaulted Gothic hall at the heart of the castle
- Carved tombstones and heraldic slabs of the Lusignan nobility
- Byzantine and Frankish glazed sgraffito pottery
- Roof terrace looking over the old harbour of Limassol
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