St Sophia cathedral in Nicosia, Cyprus. Travel around the neighborhood
As a child, we all loved to climb all sorts of abandoned places. As a rule, it was all kinds of construction sites or forgotten Parking, dilapidated buildings or abandoned factory shops. Children's imagination awoke from the contemplation of such places. It seemed to us that we are the last people on earth and lead a semi-wild life where you need to survive and escape from the dangers.
Much later there was a large number of movies and computer games on this subject, and the spirit of adventure a few pougas with age. However, not completely. For example, I still love to explore places that belong to the category of historical.
Every time we travel with family or friends, I unwittingly look for such places. And they often come across, because in every corner of the earth there is something that was once built by people, but only partially preserved, influenced by the inexorable time.
In his past trip, we also met a lot of similar places. Cyprus is a very interesting country in terms of historical attractions. And today I would like to tell a little about the building of the Hagia Sophia.
INTERESTING INFORMATION: Hagia Sophia in Nicosia was built in 1209-1325 as the Roman Catholic Church in the style of Mature Gothic and periodically along with the famagustskie the St. Nicholas Cathedral served as the Cathedral Church of Cyprus and the place of coronation of the kings. In the XV century, the temple was badly damaged by the Genoese attacks and earthquakes and was after the transition of the island under the rule of Venice in 1491 was reconstructed by French architects in a later style, although it retained Gothic features. After the capture of Cyprus by the Ottoman Empire in 1571, the temple was converted into the main mosque of the island, renamed Selimiye mosque, and two minarets were attached to it. Since 1974, the Cathedral has been located in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
Help is taken here:
Here, in Nicosia, we got an impromptu. Recently I wrote about how we went in search of the Turkish market, which is located in the city center, behind the "Green line". But it turned out that the city is fraught with many attractions, one of which was the above-mentioned Cathedral.
The Church building seems to have come down from the pages of the textbook on ancient history. It still retains the beauty of Gothic decoration, although the Turks used the building as a mosque long ago. The fact that there is a place of Muslim shrines says primarily attached to the top of the high minaret, which is strangely combined in architecture with the old Cathedral
Around quite shady, a lot of greenery. Even in the heat of the big stones keep cool, which like to sit many tourists from all over the world. In General, the situation around is very friendly. Neither the Turks nor the Cypriots among themselves are now particularly not in conflict. About the war of 1974, then remind only abandoned shops on the line of demarcation of territories.
We really wanted to get inside, but at this time there was a long prayer and tourists were not allowed. All this time we were photographed and admired the surroundings of this place. It's really cozy and beautiful around. There are public toilets and even water taps.
In General, there are a lot of old buildings in Cyprus. We visited and saw many of them. I have many more photos from that trip that I plan to publish in the near future. Also will try to tell about
