Luxury Vacations in Cyprus

The largest island nation in the Mediterranean basks in sunshine as rich and heady as the myths woven through its olive groves. Chief among its legends is that the Greek goddess of beauty and love, Aphrodite, was born from the gently foaming waters along the southern coast.

This shoreline is fittingly romantic: the resorts of Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos offer beaches cupped by golden cliffs and lapped by bright turquoise waters. And yet to assume that Cyprus is nothing more than beaches and blue sky is to ignore much of what makes it special. The deep history of the Greco-Roman ruins of Amathus and Kourion, for example. The angular majesty of the Troodos Mountains, a heaven for hikers. The gentle rusticity of the Akamas Peninsula to the west. And Cyprus also has one of Europe’s most fascinating capitals. Although sundered in two by the fortified “Green Line” and the historic bitterness between the country’s Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot populations, Nicosia is an endlessly intriguing labyrinth of churches and cafes, mosques and museums, bars and bazaars.