Kykkos Monastery
Troodos monastery founded around 1100, with gilded mosaics and a large ecclesiastical museum.
The Holy Monastery of the Virgin of Kykkos stands at about 1,140 metres in the western Troodos, roughly twenty kilometres from Pedoulas. Tradition dates its foundation to the reign of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who is said to have sent an icon of the Virgin painted by Saint Luke to the hermit Isaiah. That icon, kept in a silver-gilt case on the iconostasis and never uncovered, has made Kykkos the most visited pilgrimage site on the island.
Fire destroyed the buildings several times, most recently in 1813, so the present ranges are largely nineteenth and twentieth century. The courtyards and corridors are lined with modern mosaics and frescoes in Byzantine style, applied from the 1980s onwards. A museum opened in 1998 in vaulted galleries behind the church, showing icons, manuscripts, embroidered vestments, liturgical silver and archaeological material. Archbishop Makarios III, the first president of Cyprus, began his career here as a novice and is buried at nearby Throni.
Highlights
- Encased icon of the Virgin of Kykkos, hidden from view for centuries
- Gold-ground mosaics and frescoes lining the courtyards and passages
- Museum of icons, manuscripts, vestments and liturgical silver, opened 1998
- Tomb of Archbishop Makarios III on the Throni hill nearby
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