Thalassa Municipal Museum of the Sea
Maritime museum in Ayia Napa built around a full-size replica of the ancient Kyrenia ship.
The Thalassa Museum opened in August 2005 as a municipal museum devoted to the relationship between Cyprus and the sea. Its displays run over three levels and cover roughly seven thousand years, from Neolithic coastal settlement through the Bronze Age copper trade to the Classical, Roman, Byzantine and Venetian periods. Cases hold pottery, amphorae, anchors, tools and fossilised marine life collected by the Cypriot geologist and collector George Tornaritis, whose natural history collection forms one wing of the museum.
The centrepiece is the Kyrenia II, a full-scale sailing replica of a Greek merchant ship of about 400 BC whose wreck was excavated off Kyrenia in the 1960s. Built in 1985 for experimental archaeology, the vessel has sailed to Greece, Japan, the United States, Spain and Germany before being installed here. A glass floor above a reconstructed shipwreck, a small amphitheatre and a multipurpose hall used for lectures and cultural events complete the building.
Highlights
- Kyrenia II, a sailing replica of a merchant ship of about 400 BC
- Glass floor set above a reconstructed ancient shipwreck
- Tornaritis collection of fossils and marine natural history
- Displays tracing seven thousand years of Cypriot seafaring
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