Paphos

The old cult city stood inland at Palaipaphos, now Kouklia, where a sanctuary of Aphrodite drew pilgrims for centuries. In the late fourth century BC its last king, Nikokles, moved the settlement down to a natural harbour on the coast and founded Nea Paphos, the town whose ruins fill the coastal park today. By the early second century BC it had become the capital of Cyprus under the Ptolemies, replacing Salamis, and it stayed the island's leading city into the Roman period. The wealth of that Roman city survived underground. In 1962 a farmer's plough caught the edge of a mosaic floor, and excavation led by Polish archaeologists from 1965 uncovered the great villa pavements now named for their scenes: the House of Dionysos, the House of Theseus, the House of Aion, the House of Orpheus. In 1980 the whole of Kato Paphos, mosaics and ruins together, went onto the UNESCO World Heritage List. The living city, meanwhile, settled into its two halves. Kato Paphos grew around the harbour and the medieval castle by the water, while Ktima held the ridge inland as the market and administrative town. In 2017 Paphos was a European Capital of Culture alongside Aarhus, and much of that year's programme played out where the story began, in the open-air sites above the sea.