Anogyra

Carob was once one of Cyprus's steady exports, dried and shipped from ports like Limassol as animal feed, thickener, and sweetener; older Cypriots still call it the black gold. Anogyra kept the domestic end of that trade. At the Mavros Chrysos carob museum and factory, set in a renovated house near the square, the pods are still pressed and boiled to syrup and rolled into pasteli, said to be the last organised carob works of its kind left in the district. The hills around the village are old olive country as much as carob. About a kilometre out, the Oleastro olive park runs a stone-mill press, a small museum, and a taverna, looking south toward Episkopi bay and north to the Troodos ridge. On the approach road, a few hundred metres before the first houses, stand the ruins of the monastery of Timios Stavros, the Holy Cross. Two three-aisled basilicas sit on an older late-Roman settlement, and the small vaulted church raised over the early foundations still holds Palaiologan wall-paintings and an active congregation. By tradition the site is tied to the medieval Land of Anogyri, and a relic cross said to have come from here is now kept at the better-known Holy Cross monastery in Omodos.