The old stone houses of Kalopanagiotis crumbled down the hillside. Below, the bridge was out. I had to leave the car and gingerly inch across the span, trying not to focus on the gorge below. The monastery on the other side was deserted except for two black-clad and bearded priests. The younger greeted me with an unexpected Australian accent and ushered me into the darkness of the katholikon. Due to the lack of lighting and the netting that shrouded the interior to catch any errant flakes of paint peeling from the damp stonework it was hard to make out any details of the saints and Biblical scenes that coated the walls.

That was in 2006.

Revisiting this Easter, I was amazed at the change. Kalopanagiotis was now a chi-chi mountain resort where golf buggies carted guests through its zig-zagging streets to the spa and a shiny glass elevator joined the upper and lower sections of town. Cars trundled across the bridge, bringing crowds of visitors to the Agios Ioannis Lampadistis Monastery. There was even a conference of heritage professionals taking place in a meeting room above the monks’ cells. The interior of the monastery church was now beautifully restored and well-lit, enabling me to take in the details of the frescoes. From the entrance into the church there are essentially three naves running left to right. The first, the church of Agios Herakleidos dates from the 11th-12th centuries, the middle from 13th-14th century, and the furthest, the ‘Latin’ chapel, in a much different ‘Italo-Byzantine’ style from 1500. I found the narrow narthex the most breath-taking, decorated with Byzantine-style iconography of Saints Constantine the Great and his mother Helen as well as scenes from the Easter story. The narrow passage around the back of the church also showcases the double-roofed nature of many of these mountain churches (best seen at Nikolaos tis Stegis – St Nicholas of the Roof).

Elsewhere, signage to the scattered collection of Painted Churches is so much better than it once was (as are online map apps). I was even able to locate the church of Archangelos Michail in Pedoulas, which had previously eluded me. Compared to the others from the western grouping of churches (Nikolaos tis Stegis, Panagia tou Moutoulla and the aforementioned Agios Ioannis Lampadistis Monastery) it is on a side-street in the village itself. From the outside it is unremarkable, looking like a slightly truncated barn with a steeply-pitched roof. Inside it has more of the characteristic frescoes of the Troodos, these dated quite precisely to 1474 and to a local painter called Minas (photo).

I really enjoy this World Heritage Site. The churches themselves are very pretty, the decoration is almost too overwhelming to take in at a single viewing, the surrounding landscape of pine forests, peaks, vertiginous valleys and ramshackle villages clinging to hill sides is beautiful and an utter change from the coastal tourist resorts, and there is a delight in the treasure hunt of tracking down the scattered components. While the collected sites of Paphos may be the most ‘important’ World Heritage Site in Cyprus, in my view the Painted Churches the best that the island has to offer – and I’ve still only visited four of the ten churches inscribed.

 

World Heritage-iness: 2.5

Our Experience: 3

(Visited February 2006, April 2023)