Bellapais Abbey

Interesting facts

A Gothic carving in the chapter house shows a man hauling a double ladder, another between two sirens, and a monkey and cat in a pear tree.

The abbot held rare privileges, among them wearing a bishop's mitre at services and carrying a sword and gilded spurs outside the abbey.

Before the canons arrived the site was called Episcopia, hinting that the Bishop of Kyrenia once lived here, perhaps sheltering from 7th- and 8th-century Arab raids.

The Armenian prince and historian Hayton of Corycus took vows with the Premonstratensian canons at Bellapais in 1305.

Lawrence Durrell lived in Bellapais village in the 1950s and wrote about the abbey in his Cyprus memoir Bitter Lemons, published in 1957.

A small carved pulpit juts from the refectory's north wall, where a canon read aloud to the community during meals.

In the cloister's stacked Roman sarcophagi, water flowed from the carved upper basin into the plain lower one, then along a channel into the garden.

A stair once led straight from the church to the canons' dormitory so they could reach night services without going outside.

The church served the village's Orthodox congregation into the 20th century, so its furnishings, including an iconostasis, are far later than its walls.

The fortified gateway on the south side replaced an earlier drawbridge, and its tower was a later addition.

Why it is worth it

At about 220 metres above the sea, on a hillside above Kyrenia, the Gothic arches of Bellapais Abbey frame a long view down to the town and the Mediterranean. The abbey was raised and enlarged under the Lusignans, the crusader dynasty that then ruled Cyprus.

Its first known occupants were the Canons Regular of the Holy Sepulchre, guardians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre who fled Jerusalem after Saladin took the city in 1187. Aimery de Lusignan founded the monastery, and its earliest buildings date from 1198–1205; it was dedicated as the Abbey of St Mary of the Mountain. From 1206 the Premonstratensians, the white-robed canons, held it, which is why later documents call it the White Abbey. The church that stands today was built under King Hugh III (1267–1284), and the cloister and refectory under Hugh IV (1324–1359), who kept private apartments here. The name is usually explained as a corruption of the French Abbaye de la Paix, although the historian George Hill doubted it.

The abbey declined after Genoese raiders stripped it in 1373, and under Venetian rule the canons were said to have married and admitted only their own sons as novices. After the Ottoman conquest of 1571 it passed to the Orthodox Church; the church became the village's parish church while the rest slowly decayed. British soldiers used the refectory as a hospital in 1878 and left bullet marks on its east wall, and restoration began in 1912 under George Jeffery, curator of the island's ancient monuments.

The church is the best-preserved part, with its belfry and a carved pulpit. The cloister keeps 18 arches; under one of them, two stacked Roman sarcophagi once served the canons as a washbasin. Beyond, the vaulted refectory — 30 metres long and 10 metres wide, lit by six north windows and an east rose window — carries the arms of Cyprus, Jerusalem and the Lusignans over its door and is now used for concerts. Kyrenia below, with its harbour and Venetian-modified castle, is one of the oldest towns on Cyprus's north coast.

Getting there

The abbey stands in the village of Bellapais, about 5 km from Kyrenia (Girne). The nearest airport is Ercan International Airport (ECN), about 22 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

Bellapais Abbey is the ruin of a monastery built by canons regular in the 13th century on the northern side of the small village of Bellapais, in Northern Cyprus, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Kyrenia. The ruin is at an altitude of 220 m (720 ft) above sea level, and commands a long view down to Kyrenia and the Mediterranean sea.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Bellapais Abbey

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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From the encyclopaedia