I haven't updated this blog in several years (not since 2020) with details about trips to archaeologically and historically interesting places I have been to whilst on my holidays. Over the last few years I have been to many fantastic sites around Europe and the UK but not blogged about them. They are of interest to me as I studied History and Archaeology at University and I love all things of this nature. I like to see, from the clues these monuments etc. give us, how ancient peoples resolved a variety of issues in their everyday lives. My main focus has generally been on the military, religious and cultural side of things and the impacts that the variety of artifacts, monuments and buildings had on people's lives.
Over the last few years, since I have updated this site with my archaeological visits, I have been to many interesting places, but as they are now too late to report on now, I thought I would start again, if and when I remember, to begin to blog about my latest forays.
Just last week, my partner and I visited Paphos in Cyprus. A short walk or bus journey from our hotel took us to three very interesting, and in some cases remarkably well preserved, sites that were of great interest.
First up we visited the Byzantine castle in Paphos harbour. It has had a very colourful history and was inhabited by a variety of cultures in their turn. There is a small moat around the castle, which cannot be seen from my photographs below, and it is situated on a very defensible spit of land that protects the harbour. It is basically just the shell that is left but most of it is explorable...
Just the other side of the harbour in the Kato Pafos Archaeological Park is the UNESCO listed Greek and Roman town of Nea Pafos. It was most likely built in Ptolemaic times and subsequently added to and/or overbuilt by various inhabitants of the island. It is world-renowned for its surviving mosaics and extensive ruins that can be walked around comfortably in an afternoon (take a sun hat and plenty of water though). I didn't take that many photos of this site as pictures of most of the ruins and mosaics are in a small guidebook that can be picked up for a few Euros in the visitor centre at the site, but thought I would share a couple of views of the amphitheatre as it is so well preserved...
Finally, for this trip anyway, we visited another UNESCO site in the shape of The Tombs of the Kings. It is an extensive necropolis, that takes a good few hours to get around if you want to see all of the tombs. Unfortunately, its name does not convey the truth that there were probably no kings interred here; most likely just important members of the more elite families from the area. Again, I didn't take too many photos as the guidebook has plenty. Most of the site looks like the last picture in the sequence below but there are nine (only eight are now labelled and have a QR code on a small post for more information by them) well-preserved sets of tombs that range in complexity from just holes in the hillside to full-on subterranean pillared mausolea...
One thing I noticed about my visit to these sites in Paphos (maybe the same for the rest of Cyprus?) is that the entry fee and literature for these sites is extremely cheap compared to the equivalent of a UK based site. I think that the authorities who own these sites need to monetise them more (but not theme park them) to bring in more revenue to continue their work (there is a lot of excavation work still to be done at Nea Pafos and the Tombs of the Kings) and to maybe give more of a visitor experience - there are very few information boards (although there are QR codes available for more info, see above) which would help casual visitors to appreciate the sites more. On the other hand, those types of information boards can lead to the site being slightly "spoilt". Either way, more money would mean more excavation can be carried out and more could be learned from these fantastic monuments.
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